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Cilass r5 2. 7 
Book J-^ 



REMINISCENCES OF 
AN INDIANIAN 



FROM THE SASSAFRAS LOG 

BEHIND THE BARN IN POSET COUNTT 

TO BROADER FIELDS 



By 

J. A. LEMCKE 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE HOLLENBECK PRESS 

1905 






^ V \'\'Q\ 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Prologue i 

From the Sassafras Log behind the Barn in Posey 

County to Broader Fields 3 

Sketches — 
Wildcat Steamboating on the Wabash and its Tribu- 
taries ii8 

Flatboating down the Mississippi 125 

War Times on a Mississippi River Steamboat 148 

Adventurous Times on the Tennessee River 170 

Mutiny on an Ohio River Steamboat 177 

Fording the Ohio on a Log 185 

A War Reminiscence 189 

The Fremont Campaign of Fifty-six in a Democratic 

Neighborhood 195 

Sheriff and a Riot 202 

Some Sights Exceptionally Attractive and Interest- 
ing, as Observed in European Travels — 

A Glimpse of Italy's Northern Lakes 207 

The Riviera from the Comische Road 209 

The Great International Aquarium at Naples, Italy 213 

The Hill of the Alhambra 218 

Fairyland 222 



PROLOGUE 



O the days gone by ! O the days gone by ! 
The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye ; 
The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring, 
The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything: 
When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, 
In the golden olden glory of the days gone by. 

— James Whitcomb Riley. 

This bunch of memorabilia has been assembled sole- 
ly for the entertainment of friends and old comrades 
who are not addicted to criticism of composition or 
literary style. The perusal of these jottings is to be 
indulged in only when the baby is quiet, the house still, 
and the musical clink of the ice in the highball is the 
only disturbing sound on the premises. 

The rapidity with which the sands shift and the 
oases flit in the Sahara of life is in the following 
sketches illustrated by the numerous "ups and downs" 
of one who, per aspera ad astra, has ever striven to fol- 
low the ways of "the simple life." 

Boredom, Schopenhauer says, drives the unem- 
ployed to dissipation, society, extravagance, gaming, 
drinking and the like. As an idler I have of late 
suffered from boredom, the leaden-footed enemy of 
man; but rather than be driven to drink, or what is 
worse, society, I have striven by spinning yarns of the 

2 



2 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

"tempi passati" to kill ennui and thus help the lazy 
foot of time to amble along. 

An Irishman, when dying, was asked by the priest 
who confessed him, if he could not, among his many 
transgressions, call to mind something he had done 
that was meritorious. "Yes, your Riverince," he re- 
plied, "I once killed a ganger !" 

While I admire the Irishman and the patriotic im- 
pulse that drove him to it, I unluckily can not, for 
the interest of this narrative, recall having perpetrated 
anything so picturesque and laudable; and the bump- 
tious reader who expects to be regaled with Hterary 
"hot tomales" will, I fear, have to content himself 
with turnip-tops and bacon. When disenchanted, let 
him lay aside these leaves and bear disappointment 
with equanimity, as did "during the war" the inmates 
of a military hospital at Memphis. 

One morning one of the wards of this hospital, 
which contained many convalescents, was entered by a 
lady of benevolent mien, who had hanging on her arm 
a large basket temptingly covered with a snow-white 
napkin. To the expectant fancy of the convalescing 
and hungry "boys in blue" the innermost depths of 
the capacious basket promised no end of good things 
to eat, and with watering mouths they impatiently 
awaited the unpacking of the expected "chicken- 
fixins' " ; but when the napkin was removed, the bas- 
ket, empty of "vittels," to their sore disappointment, 
contained religious tracts, and nothing else. 



FROM THE SASSAFRAS LOG BEHIND THE 

BARN IN POSEY COUNTY TO 

BROADER FIELDS 



Early Days in Posey County. — To conquer and 
bring under subjection to the needs of man the 
wilderness of a new continent, as has been done 
by the American people, the ax and the plow 
in this western hemisphere outrank the rifle and the 
tomahawk. The hardest work for the pioneer in a 
timbered country is clearing the land of its tree 
growth. The magnificent forests covering a great por- 
tion of the state of Indiana, up to the days when I 
was a boy, have, by this time, well nigh disappeared 
from the face of the earth. I remember the time when 
the southern end of our state was so heavily tim- 
bered that the early settler, after having secured a 
supply of rails for his fences and logs with which to 
build the cabin, found himself embarrassed by what 
was then not only valueless, but sorely burdensome. 
Magnificent white oaks, yellow poplars of wondrous 
size, and black walnut trees, tall and straight as the 
Indian they had sheltered, one after another had to 
be cut down and the wood burned that the soil might 
be tilled for grain and grass, to feed man and his 
domestic animals. I shall not forget how in the 
springtime, after the winter's clearing work, when the 



4 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

logs had been rolled into large heaps and fired, the 
neighboring clearings in Posey county, where we 
lived, night after night were aglow with a golden 
hue from burning timber, to-day of more money value 
than the land upon which it grew, and the possession 
of which now would make many of our farmers rich' 
men. 

The hardest of hard work was in those days unre- 
mitting, not for the men alone, but for their wives 
as well; nor did we "kids," as soon as big enough, 
escape the hard grind. Broiled lobster and burgundy 
had not then displaced corndodgers and fat pork, but' 
the dear girls, though not tailor-made, were sugar- 
cured just the same. A shooting match on Saturday 
for beef or turkey, which always wound up with fist- 
fights for the championship of the neighborhood, was 
the acme of enjoyment for the men ; and an occasional 
quilting frolic brought together the women. We 
youngsters with our dogs would, of nights, slip out 
through the underbrush to hunt coons. The sale of 
the skins captured, together with proceeds from pelts 
of minks trapped, furnished the wherewithal for a 
squirrel rifle and the means for "laying in" at "the 
store" cinnamon-drops, which on Sunday, after "meet- 
in'," would flavor gallant attentions to our "best girl." 

Lightning Lingered by His Side. — Charley Burns 
was continually swapping horses ; he once upon a 
time, with much ado, brought out a "yearlin' " bull 
calf, trained to trot. He had him rigged with mar- 
tingales, boots, pads, and surcingle; and Charley en- 
thusiastically proclaimed him so speedy that "light- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 5 

ning lingered by his side." When he matched the 
calf against a stump-tailed mule the country turned 
out from New Harmony to Cynthiana, and from West 
Franklin to Blairsville, and all Posey made a holiday. 
I was unluckily kept away from that rare show, be- 
cause on the day previous I had tried to kill a skunk 
with a club, and the little perfumer with his Catling 
gun had made me retire to the barn, where for more 
than a week I lingered in solitary confinement, hating 
myself. 

In the early forties. Uncle William, with whom I 
lived up to the winter of fifty-one, had built himself 
a two-story frame house, covered by a roof of pine 
shingles. The house was painted white, and with' 
green shutters made a rare sight in the days of log 
cabins. This, in a democratic neighborhood, denoted 
that the owner, an aristocrat of course, voted the whig 
ticket. 

Not Accustomed to Farm Work. — Fresh from 
school in Hamburg, one of the large cities of the old 
world, about the age when boys begin to lose faith 
in the fable of the stork, I had come to the settlement 
in the spring of eighteen hundred and forty-six, to be 
forthwith projected into the hardest kind of farm 
labor. My "store clothes," soon frayed by the affec- 
tionately clinging cockleburs, were worn out in the 
cornrows of the clearing, and it was but a short time 
when the city-made garments had given way to butter- 
nut jeans of home manufacture. 

Farm work in the outset was not at all to my lik- 
ing. In the springtime the plow furrows were too 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

long, and did not 'lead straight up to Paradise." 
Chattering blackbirds, which should have been in the 
pie, were entirely too numerous for the sprouting 
young corn, and during harvest time the hot sun 
burned and blistered my tender cuticle so cruelly that 
anointing with the Balm of Gilead even would have 
failed of relief. 

Log-Roiling and Quilting Bees. — The woods, full 
of squirrels, turkeys, and other game, and with 
a wild pigeon-roost not far away, furnished plenty 
of sport, and as ''all work and no play makes Jack 
a dull boy," permission to hunt was now and then 
given. Then, by and by, as muscle developed, I was 
delegated by my uncle to take his place at log-rollings, 
house and barn raisings and corn-shuckings. I greatly 
delighted in gatherings of this sort, especially when 
there was a quilting bee attachment, and after work- 
ing hours, as Riley says, there was temptingly spread, 

A great long table fairly crammed 

With big pound cakes and chops and steaks, 

And roasts and stews and stomachaches. 

Of every fashion, form and size, 

From twisters up to pumpkin pies. 

After supper we boys and girls danced to the tune 
of "Old Dan Tucker," scraped out on a hoarse fiddle ; 
or played kissing games, in which hands were held 
in a circling march, while the company joined in the 
song, "Go choose your east, go choose your west, go 
choose the one that you love best," etc., and the young 
lady, falHng five or six feet deep into the well, would 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN J 

call on "the one that she loved best" to pull her out, 
when his reward never failed to be as many kisses as 
the well was deep. Usually Copenhagen and other 
highly intellectual pastimes wound up the evening's 
entertainment. 

Then, after having taken the girls home, we boys, 
in restful slumber, would dream of the good-night kiss 
received : 

Each kiss a heart-quake, for a kiss's strength 
I think it must be reckoned by its length, 

says Byron; and so it lingered upon our ardent lips, 
until at dawn the cock proclaimed his hallelujah to the 
coming morn. 

With its limitations and narrow margin, the strenu- 
ous conditions of backwoods life in the early days 
chastened a hardy and vigorous race of people and de- 
veloped in them many admirable characteristics, fore- 
most among which was the neighborly disposition of 
helpfulness toward each other. In sickness and in 
health, in sunshine or in rain, no matter if, over im- 
passable roads, the neighbor's clearing was miles 
away, the helping hand by night and day was always 
willingly extended and never withdrawn. 

Much chills and fever then lurked in the virgin soil. 
A swelled and hardened milt, known among the deni- 
zens of the creek and river bottoms as "ague cake," 
afflicted many; quinine, calomel and Smith's Tonic 
were found in every household, and the black bottle of 
cholagogue on the mantel-shelf filled the shaking chil- 
dren with bitter draughts and sore tribulations. 



8 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Withal, the native songbirds in these woods were so 
numerous, and their bHthe and joyful warble on bright 
mornings in early June filled the dense forests with 
such a chorus of sweet music, that the tinkle of bells 
on the necks of straying cows browsing in the woods 
became inaudible to the boy searching for the missing 
Bossy. 

These recollections revive the lines of the poet, 
where he says : 

O tell me a tale of the timberlands, 

And the old-time pioneers, 
Sompin a poor man understands 

With his feelin's 's well as his ears. 
Tell of the old log house — about 

The loft and the punchin floor. 
The big fireplace with the crane swung out, 

And the latchstring through the door. 

Robert Dale Owen and His Brothers. — People from 
the village of New Harmony, fifteen miles to the 
northwest, frequently passed on the public highway on 
which we lived. Some of them, to break the journey 
to and from Evansville, stayed all night. And I well 
remember how, on such occasions, I would, after sup- 
per, quietly sit in the corner and attentively listen to 
the conversation between my uncle, who was a scholar- 
ly man, and such visitors as Robert Dale Owen, rep- 
resentative in congress from our district, and after- 
wards father of the Smithsonian Institute ; his brother, 
David Dale Owen, who, as head of the geological de- 
partment of the United States up to eighteen fifty-six, 



/ / 

/ REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 



/ 



maintained national headquarters of the department at 
the little town on the Wabash; Colonel Richard Dale 
Owen, another brother, many years professor of natu- 
ral sciences at Bloomington University, and Alexander 
McClure, brother of William McClure, the father of 
American geology. Such presence as theirs, whenever 
they came, brightened our fireside, and the instructive 
and entertaining converse that passed between them 
stimulated in my boyish breast the desire for knowl- 
edge and learning. 

Horse Stealing. — It is true that sporadic depreda- 
tions by horse thieves required that the rifle should be 
kept in a handy place and ready primed. One gang of 
outlaws then operated from Missouri and Illinois, 
through our county and crossed the Ohio, by way of 
Diamond Island, into the state of Kentucky; but a 
party of regulators soon put a stop to their raids, and, 
breaking up their headquarters near the mouth of the 
Wabash, put a quietus on the whisky orgies and poker 
games there indulged in. 

Unrest. — After an apprenticeship of four years I had 
gradually evolved into a hardy farmhand and an all- 
round handy boy. I was now eighteen, and a lively 
rooster of unrest and enterprise, about this time, be- 
gan to crow within me. The first three years of my 
stay on the farm I had received no wages, and when the 
fourth and last year I got four dollars a month, or 
forty-eight dollars a year, investments in bank stocks 
and railway debentures were out of the question. 

The countryside had now grown tame and stale, and 



lO REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

a craving for adventure and a wider field of action gave 
me no peace, and, agreeing with Pope that, 

The mouse which always trusts to one poor hole 
Can never be a mouse of any soul, 

I determined to try my luck in town and be a city 
"gent." 

Had not great financiers and railroad magnates been 
born and bred in the clearing? Did not statesmen and 
senators now and then break in from the oat-stubble 
and potato patch? Should smartweed and dog-fennel 
satisfy when roses and carnations were within reach? 

So, with hope, which "springs eternal in the human 
breast," an extra pair of socks, and a clean shirt in a 
bundle, but without sheckles in my purse, I departed 
for the city. 

A Useful Lad. — It was not unnatural that the child- 
less couple I left behind should mourn and be loath to 
part with a handy boy, who, never idle, began at day- 
light with milking the cows, and before breakfast had 
fed the stock and chopped an armful of wood; and 
who, during the day, when not at work in the field or 
the clearing, kept up repairs on the barn and farming 
implements of the place; patched the harness of the 
horses ; half-soled the shoes of the family ; did the hog 
killing at Christmas time; pickled the hams and 
smoked them, and made the sausage and souse; 
watched the ash-hopper and boiled the soap ; and who 
on Saturday nights helped Aunt Hannah darn the 
stockings of the family. In the store, for the old gen- 
tleman kept a prosperous country store, I knew that a 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN II 

lady's gown required six yards of calico, with thread 
and hooks and eyes thrown in ; and that Uncle Jimmy 
Dyehouse was too good a customer to let leave the 
store without treating him to a glass of so-called 
Malaga wine, concocted in town, of rectified whisky,; 
molasses and rainwater; and last, but not least, who 
prepared and packed all the eggs, butter, feathers, 
beeswax, ginseng, and mink and coon skins (which 
constituted the legal tender of the neighborhood at that 
day), and, when ready for shipment to New Orleans, 
hauled them to town. 

The City. — On my advent in Evansville, I served as 
general utility boy and shuttlecock in a retail dry goods 
store. Then with night lessons in bookkeeping, I ad- 
vanced myself to a clerkship in a grain and grocery 
store; when, however, "Granmaw" Wilson proposed 
that I should saw a wagonload of wood for the stove 
while snow in the back yard lay six inches deep I 
slipped my moorings and entered the employ of a 
wholesale dry goods firm. The wind, however, then did 
not "sit in the shoulder of my sail." 

Here we boys, under the lash of the managing part- 
ner, a non-conductor, and a very much insulated 
Yankee, were made to work hard all day long, never 
allowed to sit down, and were kept out of bed so late 
at night that we all came to dislike him cordially. 

In the ofiice there was a large book and money safe, 
recently brought from New York ; it had what was then 
a new and strange contraption of a lock. Of this curi- 
ous lock Mr. Keen was very proud, and continually 
tinkering, would exhibit it to every customer and 



12 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

visitor at the store. The key, of peculiar construction, 
one day fell into my hands, and on examination by us 
clerks, was judged easily imitated. We were eager to 
perpetrate a practical joke on our unpopular boss, and 
prove the unreliability of the so highly-prized lock. 

Boys' Foolhardiness. — I, the most foolhardy and 
venturesome of the conspirators, undertook the hazard- 
ous task, and, unassisted, went to work after bedtime 
one night, to fashion out of lead and knitting-needles a 
counterfeit key. When done I inserted it into the lock, 
but on turning the knob the fool thing became jammed, 
never, I feared, again to be released. No twisting, 
turning, coaxing, anointing with oil or spit, nor cuss- 
ing did any good. 

As the anxious hours of the night wore on I began 
to fancy myself in stripes behind the bars of the state's 
prison, with a big cannon ball chained to my leg. At 
last, near the break of day, in response to a frantic ef- 
fort, which nearly broke my back, the knob suddenly 
yielded and the counterfeit key, in broken bits, flew 
from the lock onto the floor. This happy denouement 
saved me from our vindictive boss, from whose venge- 
ful inclination "to take the law on me" I should cer- 
tainly not have escaped. When, the next day, on open- 
ing the safe, a piece of battered knitting-needle fell 
from the lock of the safe our irate Mr. Keen was 
badgered and blamed for "eternally tinkering with 
something he did not understand." To this proposi- 
tion, "with gratifying emotions of no common order, 
and tremulous with pathos," I gave my hearty assent. 
Thus early in my career had I foolishly failed to heed 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I3 

Solomon's warning, "On sliding down the bannister of 
life beware of splinters." 

After a service with this firm of less than a year I 
concluded that lifting bales and nailing boxes was not 
the best and only way to become a future Rothschild. 
I then took a change of venue and entered "a life on 
the ocean wave," to make a "home on the rolling 
deep." This opened to my optimistic gaze a vista of 
unbounded scope and limitless possibilities. 

One-Horse Steamhoating. — Possessed of an active 
liver and buoyant spirits, I now shipped for the Wa- 
bash and east fork of White river. The stars at that 
time did not presage that my first attempt at steamhoat- 
ing should end with but a single trip and the boat's 
career ingloriously terminate in the hands of the United 
States marshal; but such ending envious fate had de- 
creed. The ill-fated craft, the "H. M. Summers," was a 
single-engine, wheezy old clatterbox; her owner and 
captain, a jack-leg carpenter, was bossed by his little 
earwig of a wife, while I became the clerk or purser of 
the scow, with never a purse to hold. Of this, and my 
subsequent winter campaign on horseback through the 
White River country and over the frozen creek bottoms 
of Pike and Dubois counties, in vain attempts to sell the 
salt pile, unloaded by the "Summers" in an uncommer- 
cial locality, I have "narrated" more at length in an- 
other place. 

A Trip to New Orleans. — Along in July of the next 
year there came down the Ohio on her way to New 
Orleans the large passenger steamer "Indiana," and, 
being shorthanded in the office, I was shipped up for the 



14 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

round trip as receiving clerk. At this rare opportunity 
to visit the far-famed "Paris of America" and see its at- 
tractions, I grasped eagerly. Five days, however, un- 
der the ardent rays of a broiling midsummer sun, stand- 
ing on the New Orleans levee, discharging and receiv- 
ing cargo, well-nigh used me up and left no time and 
less inclination for sightseeing. 

Green River in Kentucky. — No sooner had I again 
set foot in Evansville than a sick friend, the owner of 
a country store on the banks of Green river in Ken- 
tucky, asked my aid and assistance in running his busi- 
ness. Near the store the Spottsville lock and dam 
forms a deep pool, teeming with fine fish; and the 
dense, leafy woods then harbored turkeys and deer in 
abundance. The fishing, in company with Dave Mc- 
Bay, part fisherman, part trapper, 

A lawless linsey-woolsey brother, 
Half of one order, half of another, 

was followed through the late autumn so persistently 
that by November the ague had me in its clutches, and 
in spite of calomel and quinine held me captive all 
winter. 

Armed with torch and harpoon, Mac and I every 
night had entered the transparent waters of the stream, 
while 

The white stars, like folded daisies in a summer field. 
Slept in their dew, where by the primrose gap in 
Darkness hedge, St. Ruth hath dropped her sickle. 

After bringing the catch to shore and roasting the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I5 

beauties at a blazing log heap for lunch, and while the 
fire's heat dried the clothes on our backs, old Mac 
would, until midnight, reel off fabulous yarns and 
entertaining lies, of which the following is a sample 
brick : 

A big snake which one evening, by his friend Cy 
Ross, had been released from the weight of a piece 
of timber that had fallen upon the reptile's back and 
held it pinned down, followed its benefactor into the 
house unobserved, where, in an empty room, it lay 
quiet and unnoticed until after midnight. When, at 
that hour, a burglar broke into the house, the grateful 
worm, stealthily, in the dark, coiled itself around the 
robber's legs, and holding him captive, stuck its tail 
out of the window and frantically rattled for the police. 

From this specimen it is to be seen that my friend, 
unreliable at all times in his assertion that brutes show 
gratitude, was to be taken cum grano salts. 

Green river, one of the sylvan streams of Kentucky, 
is navigable for two hundred miles upward from its 
confluence with the Ohio. From Evansville, by way 
of Bowling Green, it forms a charming route to the 
Mammoth Cave, one of the wonders of America. 
Bowling Green is an attractive little city in the blue- 
grass region of Kentucky, where handsome women 
abound and fine horses are bred. Green river, made 
navigable by the aid of locks and dams, flows between 
densely wooded banks, from whence the pendant foli- 
age drops into quiet, crystalline pools and gives it the 
color from which it derives its name. The upper 
part of the stream has high, rocky and picturesque 



I6 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

shores, covered with a growth of cedar, which gives 
variety to the landscape. Above its confluence with 
the ''Barren," Green river runs through the great cave, 
where it is inhabited by sightless amphibige and fish 
without eyes. 

Twenty Miles of River on a Plank. — In the early 
autumn of that year the water in both Green and 
Ohio rivers fell so low that navigation by steamer 
was suspended. Then urgent business called me to 
Evansville, and, as no practical "all land" route existed, 
I determined to make the trip on anything that would 
float. I procured from a sawmill above the dam a 
poplar slab of suflicient buoyancy; and then, to the 
great delight of several small boys, in the early morn- 
ing hours, after paying a quarter lockage, Rube, the 
lockkeeper, passed me through the gates of the lock, 
and I started on my twenty-mile floating voyage to 
Evansville. This, on account of sluggish currents in 
both rivers, lasted until late into the night, and re- 
quired such hard and continued paddling that when 
at last I arrived at my destination the overworked 
muscles of the arms, chest and back gave so much 
pain that it kept me tossing on my cornshuck mat- 
tress in misery the balance of the night. 

Ice Bridge in One Night. — On another occasion 
during the following severe winter the thermometer 
dropped so low that ice for a time impeded naviga- 
tion; and it was then again necessary that I should, 
on a certain day, be in Evansville. This time I had 
a companion with whom, through deep snow and over 
a rough country, the twenty-mile trip was made per 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I7 

pedes apostelorem. Singing and whistling we fol- 
lowed Green river to its mouth, and then, through the 
roadless bottom lands of the Ohio, continued through 
underbrush and over fallen timber until, late at night, 
we arrived at a farmhouse opposite Evansville. Cross- 
ing the river being of course out of the question, we 
gratefully accepted supper and a bed from the hos- 
pitable family on the farm. The roar and grinding 
rumble of the big blocks of ice, as they tumbled over 
each other, kept us, in spite of utter exhaustion, awake 
until after midnight. The cold then became so intense 
that before day the ice gorged and formed a complete 
bridge, by which, after breakfast, we were enabled to 
cross, on foot and dry shod, into Indiana, a river nearly 
a mile wide. 

Railroading. — It now came about, after having had 
a taste of steamboating on "the catfish inhabited deep," 
that I should also try my hand at railroading. Late 
in the winter of eighteen fifty-two, when the Evans- 
ville and Terre Haute railroad was in course of con- 
struction, and had, from Evansville north, progressed 
twenty-five miles, a station agent was needed at Kings, 
the then northern terminus of the road; and Mr. 
Ingle, the secretary of the railway, appointed me to 
the place. I here found, by the side of the track, a 
temporary arrangement, made up of nothing better 
than the body of a dismantled box-car. Its furnish- 
ings consisted of a rusty cannon stove, without peri- 
staltic action, a deal table, a low bunk of rough boards, 
two soap boxes instead of chairs, and a water bucket 
with tin cup. Here in the dark and unbroken forest, 
3 



l8 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

nightly huddled up with my Newfoundland dog, I 
spent the dreary winter and sloppy spring in solitude. 

Love-Purr Switched Off. — I had my meals at a 
farmhouse a mile down the road. There were two 
daughters in the Jackson family. Ellen the younger 
of the two, a sixteen-year-old, dark-haired sweet gos- 
ling, with dreamy blue eyes, to whom I tried to give 
the low entrancing love-purr, was too timid to re- 
ciprocate my amorous gaze, and, retiring early, would 
leave me with Nancy, the elder sister, for com- 
pany. She, more receptive, but artificial, with city 
airs, taken on at a neighboring village, left me abso- 
lutely indifferent. One night, when conversation got 
to a point where, like David Harum's horse, it would 
stand without hitching, and gumdrops had given out, 
Nancy brought out a hymn-book, called the Missouri 
Harmony, from which, in an unmusical voice, she sang 
tune after tune. When at last I got away, it was 
with the determination to get myself to the nunnery 
of my lonely shanty, with gunnybag and hay-bale dec- 
orations, and find contentment in dreams of sweet El- 
len, to whom I never had the courage to reveal the 
microbe gnawing at my vitals. 

Tough Ducks. — As city gent and honored guest, I 
was one night made to preside at a quilting and corn- 
shucking supper in the next township. "The women 
folks" at the long table ranged from "giggling girls 
with corkscrew curls" to grandmothers with iron- 
rimmed spectacles. The job of carving duck was too 
much for me, however, as I had nothing better to 
operate with than a pot-metal table-knife, with an edge 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I9 

SO thick that I could safely have ridden upon it to 
"Banbury Cross" without splitting my trousers. An 
ugly situation was relieved only when, after wrestling 
a tough old web-footed drake off the table on to the 
floor, the kitchen tomahawk was brought into requisi- 
tion. 

Songs of the Long Ago. — On the whole, life at the 
station was tedious and uneventful, and the nights 
were inexpressibly lonesome and dreary. With the 
advance of spring and the extension of the road into 
Princeton my station was moved up on high ground 
near the town. This, with a roomier shanty, very 
much bettered the situation, and here during the early 
summer the village girls and their beaux visited, to 
hear me tinkle the melodious guitar and to listen to 
my songs, which were then of the "Come Where My 
Love Lies Dreaming," "Thou, Thou, Who Rests in 
This Bosom," and "Smile Once Again" sort. 

The ''Glorious Fourth'' Proves Disastrous. — With 
the advent of "the glorious" Fourth of July came its 
inevitable celebration. The two second-hand passen- 
ger coaches and a number of "bebuntined" cattle and 
construction cars carried, between Evansville and 
Princeton, on that sweltering summer day, many a 
perspiring excursionist over the wavy and undulating 
rails of the unballasted piece of new railroad. Orders 
from the president had that morning assigned me, at 
the Princeton end of the road, to the duties of yard- 
master and train dispatcher. When, however, one of 
the two conductors then in the employ of the road 
suddenly fell ill, and Mr. Ingle, the secretary, who 



20 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

happened to be near, asked me to take the sick man's 
train half way down the road, I, in my zeal to be use- 
ful, deserted for the time the post assigned me by 
the president. Here is "where I dropped my molasses 
jug," as Uncle Remus would have said. On the re- 
turn to Princeton it was all up with me. In spite of 
the fact that I had, in an emergency, acted at the re- 
quest of a high officer of the corporation, and although 
I had returned my train on time and avoided irregu- 
larity or accident. Judge Hall, the president, discharged 
me for disobedience of orders promptly and without 
viaticum. Thus I found myself on the nation's glori- 
ous birthday suddenly kissed off and frozen to the 
cushion; and the princely income of four hundred 
dollars per annum "gone where the woodbine twineth." 
Jap Miller's Experience. — Here was a how d'y do, 
here was a state of things. I took my guitar, packed 
up the few locks of hair and daguerreotype gallery of 
rural beauties, and returned to the fresh water seaport 
on the Ohio. I have since then often thought of my 
democratic friend Jap Miller's experience, who once 
upon a time aspired to the postmastership at Martins- 
ville. Application, in proper form and due time, had 
been sent to the department at Washington and re- 
ceipt duly acknowledged. After a season of weary 
waiting and anxiety friends suggested to Jap that Mr. 
Cleveland might be holding back on account of Miller's 
whisky-drinking and poker-playing habits ; and he was 
advised to reform and go to work to build up a charac- 
ter, without which he would be certain to lose the ap- 
pointment. "I then," Jap told me, "promptly went to 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 21 

work to build up an 'A number one' character; but 
when I had it (I mean the character) ready done, 
the postoffice went to another fellow, and I was left 
with a character on hand and no use for it." Except- 
ing the whisky and poker trimmings, mine was a simi- 
lar case. I had, while working for the railroad com- 
pany, striven hard to make for myself a character; 
and here I was with a character on my hands for 
which now I had no use. 

Cigar Making to Bridge Over. — The Frenchman 
says, ''sans six sous is to be sans souci." Nevertheless, 
while waiting for reinstatement and being informed 
by one of ^sop's fables "that a sitting hen gathers 
no moss," I employed the idle hours making cigars, 
a handiwork which I had, during leisure moments, 
picked up while sojourning in Kentucky. 

Cigar making, as an art, does not appeal to my best 
aspirations; but as an honorable means of "bridging 
over," proved helpful. Like Riley's philosopher, 

I always argy that a man 
Who does about the best he can, 
Is plenty good enough to suit 
This lower mundane institute. 

Steamhoating on Green River. — This improvised 
industrial pursuit kept me square with my two-dollars- 
and-a-half-per-week boarding-house until later on I 
obtained a berth as clerk on the Green river packet 
"Olive." Then, once more, did I enter the honorable 
guild of steamboatmen. 

This employment lasted until the autumn only, when, 



22 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

on account of low water, the boat had to go to "the 
bank," and I once more was out of commission. 

Weevily Wheat and Frozen Potatoes. — Along about 
this time it occurred to me that the only sure road to 
opulence lay in the direction of merchandizing; and 
when I had successfully talked Uncle William into 
the humor of making me a small loan of money there 
was established in the lower end of town a trading 
post where grain and country produce formed the 
staples of traffic. This enterprise, for an insufficiency 
of the nervus rerum, was only of long enough dura- 
tion to prove that a gimlet will not bore a bunghole and 
that youthful enthusiasm is not cash. On winding up 
the venture I was, however, gratified at being able to 
return to my uncle the stake he had furnished to finance 
the enterprise, and quit, owing no man a cent. 

Strutted as Don Ccesar de Bazan. — Once during that 
time I was worried by the fear that I, to speak in the 
language of Mrs. Malaprop, had forfeited the old 
gentleman's malevolence. It was when at nine o'clock 
A. M.^ after having of a cold morning driven his ten 
miles to town, he found me in bed asleep, and nobody 
but a little "sawed-off" "tom-tit" of a boy on watch, 
wrestling with customers over frozen potatoes and 
weevily wheat. The night before, in a billy-cock hat, 
I had, as a member and leading man of a Thespian 
society at Mozart Hall, strutted and impersonated Don 
Caesar de Bazan; and as "early to bed and early to 
rise," as Dr. Franklin taught, is "the root of all evil," 
I managed to devote the wee sma' hours to "the mazy," 
and had made a night of it lingering "over the ruby." 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 2^ 

In those halcyon days of youth there was, as I now 
can see, entirely too much "fun" injected into busi- 
ness. With mandolin and banjo we boys would often 
make night hideous, and by serenading enter into com- 
petition with lovesick tomcats in the back yard. 

In the Forks of Big Creek. — The year eighteen hun- 
dred and fifty-three brought my brother Alexander to 
America. In Hamburg, the most important commer- 
cial city and seaport on the continent of Europe, which 
was our home and birthplace, he had served his appren- 
ticeship as clerk in one of the old tea importing houses 
of the city. Like many others, full of expectations, he 
came to the new world to pursue Dame Fortune, and 
make for himself a future home. 

In eighteen forty-eight, two years after my departure 
for America, our father had died. He had been in the 
civil service of the city, and left mother with a small 
pension only. With limited resources, but courage 
and determination, aided by exemplary management, 
she had succeeded in bringing up her four girls and two 
boys under precepts of industry and frugality and fairly 
well educated. She encouraged the boys to honestly 
strive for independence, and used to quote Voltaire's 
retort to his criticizing friends, "J'aime I'argent beau- 
coup, parce que j'aime la liberie/' After parting with 
the second son it was not long until mother, with the 
girls, followed. It now became necessary for brother 
and myself to look about for an anchorage and snug 
harbor for the family. 

''Milt" Blackburn.— ''Milt" Blackburn, very popular 
with himself, was a pious psalm-singing hypocrite, 



24 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

who pretended to be on familiar terms with Father, 
'Son, and Holy Ghost, but who in reality maintained 
intimate relations with the Goddess Venus only. He 
had, during a season of hot religious revivals, been 
caught in flagrante delictu by his betrayed wife, and 
in consequence had been churched by his Baptist breth- 
ren. Blackburn owned a country store on the Black- 
ford road in the "Forks of Big Creek," Posey county ; 
and when the neighborhood began to get too hot for 
him he concluded to sell out, go west, and "grow up 
with the country." Now, Uncle William once more 
came to the rescue, and helped us to buy out Mr. 
Blackburn. 

Crossroads Wanamaker. — Thus, a dozen miles 
from Mt. Vernon, the county seat of Posey, in partner- 
ship with my brother, I became a crossroads Wana- 
maker and joint owner of ten acres of land, with its 
log cabins and the miscellaneous contents and business 
of a country store; and when, after a while, we had 
adjusted ourselves to the new situation of living under 
a clapboard roof and on puncheon floors, and the 
gourds began to hang on the back fence, and the morn- 
ing-glories over the front door, contentment crept 
into the cabin unawares, and the proverbial goose 
hung at an encouraging altitude. 

Aunt Katie Mills. — The people hereabouts proved 
to be kindly disposed Hoosiers. "Aunt" Katie Mills, 
our nearest neighbor, a handsome elderly woman of 
commanding presence, resourceful and always ready 
to help with decoctions and remedies of her own brew- 
ing, gave much comfort to our "women folks" in their 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 2^ 

new and unaccustomed surroundings. Aunt Katie's 
"old man/' "Uncle" Nick, a shrewd and clear-headed 
old codger, had been, before he fell from grace, a cir- 
cuit-riding preacher of the Methodist persuasion. 

When at a sanctification meeting the congregation 
was asked to stand up, that it might be shown "who 
loved Jesus," he made the statement that "he was 
paired" with Joe Oliver, well known as a heterodox old 
sinner, and refused to budge from his seat. For trim- 
ming up his hair now and then he always regaled me 
with interesting stories of the early settlement days. 
In a retrospective mood he once quoted the following 
not to be forgotten sentiment: 

We come into this world naked and bare, 
We go through the world with sorrow and care, 
We go out of the world God knows where. 
But if we are thoroughbreds here we shall be thoroughbreds 
there. 

Of nights the two Mills boys, both strapping fellows, 
were always ready with their dogs to take me with 
them coon hunting. Jim, the younger one of the two, 
sported for a time the belt as champion fist-fighter of 
the county, and was by me looked upon as a sort of 
protective Monroe Doctrine. 

Sanctification. — Among the people in the "Forks" 
there was a parcel of religious enthusiasts, who kept up 
a great racket with their camp and protracted meet- 
ings. When they prayed for sanctification the straw 
around the mourners' bench was pawed into little bits, 
and would frequently get into the sisters' hair and all 
over their backs. Brother Jimmie Dyehouse, better 



26 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

known as Old Leather Lungs, when he preached could 
be heard over in the next county. He was a mighty 
terror to sinners ; and the Devil, it was firmly asserted, 
stood in awe and dread of his blustering prowess. 

Priscilla Perry, a ripe and warm little widow, was 
the leader and main push of this bunch of cranks. 
When she got sanctification she sold her gold-plated 
watch and gave away her husband's rifle with the globe 
sight to a worldly nephew of his'n. She was very 
much like Melissy Allgood, in Lucy Furman's stories 
of a sanctified town, who spent her days in fighting sin 
and her nights in chasing fleas. Melissy says, "When 
I got sanctification I gave up vanity for my own self, 
and sold my new four-dollar spring hat with the roses 
on it to old Aunt Bundy for a dollar and thirty cents, 
and ripped the ruflles and velvet off my black alpaca, 
and give my green merino to an unregenerate niece 
of pa's, and slicked back my bangs and tried to live 
godly;" and when a friend informs her that she is 
bound to have "some of them new-fashioned big puffed 
sleeves that was all the style," she says, "Paul says, 
that women ought rather to clothe themselves in 
shamefacedness and sobriety;" and while talking, she 
says, "I careless like opened the Bible, and the first 
words my eyes fell on was Ezekiel xiii : i8. Thus saith 
the Lord, Woe to the women that sew pillows in arm- 
holes, to hunt the souls of my people !" 

Brother Dyehouse, at one of his meetings which I at- 
tended, preached against tobacco. He said that no man 
that chawed tobacco could hope to get "the blessin'." 
Somewhere in Corinthians it said, "Having therefore 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 2^ 

these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse our- 
selves from all filthiness of the flesh;" and if chawin' 
tobacco wasn't filthiness of the flesh, he'd like to know 
what it was. "A hog wouldn't chaw tobacco !" They 
had "Bible" for everything they did and said ; took its 
language literally, and were narrower than the eye of 
the needle in the parable. 

/ Become Auctioneer. — The "Star of Empire," with 
many of the people in the Forks and surrounding coun- 
try about this time, began to point "westward." They 
sold out to German immigrants and other "new- 
comers," who now flocked into Posey and Vanderburgh 
counties. Then there would usually be an auction sale 
of wagons, plows, harness, horses, cattle and hogs, and 
as I conducted these sales, the fees as auctioneer thus 
earned and the writing of deeds and mortgages added 
a few dollars to our revenues. 

Roan Stallion. — In order to still further help the re- 
turns on the right side of the ledger I established a 
business branch at Grafton Mills, some distance 
further down the creek towards the Wabash river. 
Here once a week I would take in what eggs, feathers, 
beeswax and other produce was offered, and haul them 
home, there to be prepared for shipment to market in 
New Orleans and elsewhere. One day, however, I 
came in violent contact with the south end of my 
fractious little roan stallion while he was going north. 
The sudden collision with his heels made me, at the 
time, forget whether he was a Late Rambo or an 
Early Rose, and compelled me for some time thereafter 
to eat my "vittels" from the top of the mantel-piece. 



28 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

For a couple of years brother and I successfully 
bartered and traded with the people in "the Forks/' 
We then sold out, and with the net proceeds, which to 
us represented quite an encouraging little sum, re- 
moved to Evansville, where there was fitted up a home, 
modest but comfortable, which, with better surround- 
ings, proved vastly more congenial to the ladies of the 
family. 

Back to the City — Teller in Canal Bank. — I now 
obtained a situation as bookkeeper and teller in the 
Canal Bank, one of the free banks of the state, popu- 
larly known as "wildcat banks;" my brother at the 
same time became secretary of the gas company ; while 
the eldest sister gave piano lessons, using an instru- 
ment the family had brought with it from the old coun- 
try. Much time in my new occupation was spent 
standing behind the bank's counter to redeem its notes, 
as in those days they were presented for coin. It was 
the practice then in all the banks of the state that the 
man who presented himself with the conventional 
black carpet-bag filled with our bills for redemption, 
demanding coin, should, in a spirit of hostility, be an- 
noyed. To waste his time I doled out for each five- 
dollar note, separately, ten silver half dollars, and a 
dray often was required to haul the stuff to where the 
poor devil, pistol in hand, had to spend sleepless nights 
to guard it. 

Fremont Campaign. — When, that autumn, a vacation 
was accorded me, this being 1856, the year of the Fre- 
mont campaign, I, with consent of the bank directors, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 29 

determined to join a "spouting" friend on a political 
bushwhacking expedition in the country. We were 
billed by the free-soil element to speak at various points 
in some of the rural counties of southern Indiana, then 
almost unbrokenly democratic. Like little Gullivers we 
valiantly sallied forth in quest of the democratic Brob- 
dingnag. We readily found him, but after a week's 
campaigning, playing hide and seek with the giant, we 
left some of our ordnance and ammunition in the en- 
emy's hands and were lucky to get back home with 
nothing worse than a smell, foul, funky and fuliginous, 
in our hair. The tally-sheets at the following election 
did not bear perceptible evidence of our daring effort. 
The details of how, like Hudibras, we were balked, 
overcome and cudgeled by Trulla, according to Sam- 
uel Butler's delectable history, is told in another place. 

Evansville's Four Hundred. — The winter season 
following opened up to me some of the pleasures which 
in the "Forks of Big Creek" had been left out of the 
curriculum. The daughters of the cashier of our bank, 
young society ladies of refinement, soon came to the 
aid of the susceptible young man from the country; 
and it was not long before he began to part his hair in 
the middle and show skill in the handling of a partner 
in the dance. This successfully opened to me the 
charmed circle of the "four hundred," where soon I 
was chagrined to learn the fact, that on entering the 
fashionable salon of society, you have to leave outside 
not only hat, cane and overcoat, but candor as well. 

Evansville society then, with its intermixture of 
Kentucky dash and southern grace, had many attrac- 



30 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

tions for a young- man susceptible to social allurements 
and gaiety. With the assurance of a thoroughbred I 
boldly shied my castor into the arena, and found my- 
self ere long playing "eenee-meenee-mynee-mo" with 
the young princess and enjoying a full measure of pro- 
tection from Madame la Duchesse, the mother. 

The bank's rigid rules for exactitude, punctuality 
and mathematical precision began to have a salutary 
effect on my, up to then, want of method in business 
matters, and established in me habits and practices, 
orderly and thorough, which have served to this day 
and have largely contributed to whatever business suc- 
cess I achieved in after years. 

Flathoating. — Then gradually an irresistible desire 
to tease fickle fortune with ambitious ventures seized 
upon me, and the thought often recurred that if "one 
could look into the seeds of time and say which grain 
will grow and which will not," the road to fortune 
would be made quite easy. But with all mankind, I 
long since then have realized that "the best laid plans 
of mice and men gang aft aglee." As time went on, 
the regular round of office work grew tame and taste- 
less, and as "no Calypso barred the way to Ithaca," I 
concluded to try my luck "by flood and field," and seek 
both adventure and dollars in the timber lands of south- 
ern Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri, and in flatboating 
on the Mississippi river. The incidents and outcome 
of this enterprise I have related in another paper, to- 
gether with some exciting episodes and interesting hap- 
penings on the Tennessee river. 

Return Home "Busted." — When, after a while, im- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 3I 

pecunious but full of experience, I returned disen- 
chanted from the unprofitable flatboating and timber 
enterprise to Evansville, I for the first time fully 
realized that "the wings of a sparrow will not support 
the ideas and aspirations of an eagle." Then the Canal 
Bank again willingly opened its doors to me, and cheer- 
fully heeding 'Squire Hawkins's advice to his friend 
John, *'to wipe his eyes, blow his nose and start 
again," I, with alacrity, once more entered upon the 
duties of my accustomed place in the bank. 

City Clerk. — At the spring election of 1858, Well- 
man Walker, a young man of good family and well 
qualified, who for several consecutive terms had held 
the office of city clerk, was again the democratic can- 
didate. But as he and Major Smith Gavitt, the dem- 
ocratic boss, had quarreled, the latter was determined 
to defeat Walker's election. The boss failing to find 
among his partisans a man eligible and sufficiently well 
known to promise success, without asking "by your 
leave," put me up, and announced my name for the 
place; and the election, without the slightest effort on 
my part, went my way. It was thus that without 
"shriving" or by the aid of clergy, I was projected into 
politics, received my sentence and for the term of one 
year became city clerk of Evansville. 

I thereupon managed to arrange affairs in such man- 
ner as to continue in my place at the bank and attend 
to the duties of the office at the same time. I hired a 
superannuated little old shrimp of an "Irish gintle- 
man" for a small stipend, and paid for his services out 
of the magnificent city clerk's salary of six hundred 



32 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

dollars. I then managed to give my time during busi- 
ness hours to the bank ; and the most important duties 
of the clerk's office, such as attending council meetings, 
making up the minutes, keeping the records and draw- 
ing warrants on the city treasurer, with constant aid 
from the midnight oil, were satisfactorily performed 
when other people slept. I thus served two masters at 
the same time, and satisfied both to such a degree that 
at the end of the political year I barely escaped a sec- 
ond term in office. 

Wholesale Grocer. — Then another vista of the road 
to wealth opened to my enchanted view. An interest 
on easy terms offered itself in a wholesale grocery 
house with the promise of my name in the firm, and 

SORENSON, LeMCKE & COMPANY 

on the bills and letterheads. Now, when I had quit 
the bank once more, I became a merchant — this time 
a wholesaler with a great big W. I was sure then that 
I plainly saw ready-made success on the other side of 
the fence of adversity, scratching and pawing to get 
at and capture me. It did not, however, take long to 
discover that ten cents profit on a barrel of flour and 
ha'penny a pound on coffee, with dried apples getting 
weevily and molasses running out of leaky sugar hogs- 
heads, and thus reducing weight, did not leave much 
butter on the bread of commerce for S., L. & Co., and 
unless sales could be made by the shipload, and in our 
own ships at that, no headway was to be expected. 

Then one day I had to haul a customer twenty-three 
miles to sell him a three-hundred-dollar bill of goods, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 33 

and foundered the horse in the attempt, while the 
drunken old Plesiosaurus broke down the easy-back of 
the buggy in which we rode, I began to realize that 
once more I had embarked in the wrong ship. It was 
evident that slow and antiquated business methods and 
an insufficiency of capital made loss instead of profits 
inevitable. 

Then the disquieting phantom of a business break- 
down and bankruptcy arose and gave me no peace by 
day nor rest at night, but "upon the heat and flame of 
my distemper I sprinkled cool patience," and from this 
time on strove with might and main for an honorable 
disentanglement from the disheartening situation. 
When at last I succeeded, it was without a cent, and 
shorn once more of the money paid in and all my sav- 
ings. It now dawned upon me that I was getting more 
than my share of bad luck, but perhaps David Harum 
is right when he says, "a reasonable amount of fleas is 
good for a dog — they keep him from broodin' on bein' 
a dog." A year afterward the ''krach" came, it left 
the remaining partners, both old men, with a load of 
indebtedness from which there was no escape until 
death came to their relief. 

Hotel Scheme. — Always stirring, never idle, I did 
not, however, sit up with my trouble long ; but with the 
aid of influential citizens and the newspapers of the 
city, I assembled and engineered public meetings, aim- 
ing at a scheme to build a hotel, of which Evansville, 
with steadily growing population and increasing com- 
merce, had sore need. But as out of two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars stock, after persistent drumming, 



54 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

one-third only could be placed, the project at that time 
had to be abandoned. Several years later I renewed 
the proposition in modified form, and succeeded in giv- 
ing the city a first-class hotel, which to this day is a 
necessary and integral part of it and has proven itself a 
profitable investment. 

Steamer ''Autocrat." — About this time some of our 
Evansville steamboatmen were engaged in the con- 
struction of the "Autocrat," a boat of large dimensions, 
designed for the New Orleans trade. Conditionally 
upon my buying into the stock of the company I was 
offered the situation of first clerk of the steamer. I 
was poor, very poor. My last faux pas had stripped 
me to the buff. Encouraged, however, by the spirit of 
the old lady with two teeth only, who pluckily cried, 
"Thank God, they hits !" I braced up and called upon 
my remaining teeth in the shape of an unimpaired 
credit, and succeeded once more "in putting on the 
gloves and coming to time." But as work on the boat 
progressed and bills accumulated, it soon developed 
that the nervus rerum was beginning to run low, and 
that with the assets at our command and in perspectu, 
the boat could not be finished. "Here was a pretty 
mess ; here was an ugly pickle." 

Steamer ''Fanny Bullitt." — Then, fortunately, with 
"the flowers that bloom in the spring tra la," there 
came relief in negotiations with the Benedict Brothers 
of Louisville, who were the owners of a number of 
large boats. In a trade agreed upon, they took the 
"Autocrat" and her indebtedness off our hands, and 
gave us the side-wheel steamer "Fanny Bullitt" in ex- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 35 

change. The latter boat, a well-appointed passenger 
steamer, and a carrier of good capacity and fair speed, 
was an altogether stanch and seaworthy craft then run- 
ning as a regular packet between Louisville and New 
Orleans. From this dicker I emerged with a one-third 
interest in the boat and the head clerkship. 

We had now only been fairly organized when Cap- 
tain Greer, a joint owner and the boat's commander, 
fell sick, and on the way up the Mississippi died of the 
then prevailing cholera. In this new misfortune, I 
was forced with the poet to exclaim, 

Wer Ungliick soil haben 

Stolpert im Grase; 
Fallt auf den Riicken 

Und bricht sich die Nase. 

Abandon Race for County Clerk to go on the River. 
— Greer's death made it necessary that I should assume 
the management of affairs immediately. But as the 
republican county convention that summer had, against 
my earnest protest, nominated me for clerk of the 
courts of Vanderburgh county, another trouble arose 
which was finally settled, when, with consent of the 
county committee, I abandoned the race for office. 
Election day was then but a few weeks off, and as our 
party in the county that fall, against an overwhelming 
democratic majority, had no prospects whatever, the 
opposition candidate was left in undisputed possession 
of the field and race. 

Captain Greer being dead, and I not having had 
sufficient experience at seamanship to assume com- 



36 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

mand of the boat, necessitated that I should find a 
competent man to fill the place of captain. In this I 
succeeded admirably when I found Captain Henry W. 
Smith of Louisville, who was not only an expert navi- 
gator and good business man, but a person of probity 
and excellent character as well. When he assumed 
command of the boat he also bought our dead partner's 
interest, and became an owner equally interested. In 
pursuit of the business during the following winter he, 
as captain, and I, as head clerk, worked harmoniously 
to the same end. 

The War Breaks Out — When in the spring of 
sixty-one the war broke out it stopped steamboating 
and nearly all other business of the country as well. 
"I hain't never had no luck with nothin' nohow," old 
Aunt Nan said one day, when she complained that her 
Johnny- jumpups and gillyflowers wouldn't do well. 
This plaintive note of despair uttered by the old lady, 
repeatedly ran through the cells of my brain, as I sat 
disconsolately on the forecastle of the boat the day 
after her wheels had stopped revolving. "Yes," said I 
to myself, "up to this time Dame Fortune has certainly 
been hostile. A heavy indebtedness against a property 
now worthless makes the future look gloomy. Verily, 
with the old lady I did say, "I hain't never had no luck 
with nothin' nohow !" 

The Stern-Wheeler ''Charley Bowen." — A few local 
"packets" only, on the great river's tributaries, strug- 
gled to carry the mails, and keep their crews from 
starving and the machinery from rusting. Among 
these Captain Henry T. Dexter, with the stern- wheeler 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 37 

"Charley Bowen," a fast and gamy little clipper, com- 
ing from the Muskingum river, continued that sum- 
mer to run regularly two trips each week in the lower 
Ohio between Evansville, Paducah and Cairo. During 
this time, with the "Fanny" out of commission, and 
while she lay idle below the falls of the Ohio at Port- 
land wharf, I lent Dexter a helping hand by taking 
charge of the clerk's office on the "Bowen," where, 
singly and alone, I performed the work which in ordi- 
nary times on both day and night watches required 
three men. Mail landings were close together; too 
close to permit of going to bed, and frequent hails 
from shore prevented sleep. 

Paducah and War. — One morning, at Paducah, 
when, for want of closing a lid the dust on my eye- 
balls had accumulated an inch thick, a rebel mob at- 
tempted to capture us, which shook not only the dust 
clean and clear from the eyes, but the desire for sleep 
also. The delectable details of this picnic are to be 
found on another page of this truthful chronicle. 

Captain Dexter and His Race-Horse. — Among river 
men, many of whom at the outbreak of the war were 
southern sympathizers. Dexter, a sturdy old fellow, 
and an uncompromising union man, steadily upheld 
the flag, and bid defiance to the secessionists on the 
Kentucky shore. 

He never bent his stubborn knee, 
And least of all to chivalry. 

After the Paducah affair, from which we had escaped 
with flying colors. Captain D. and I became good 



38 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

friends, and for several years I had the management 
of the old man's finances in my custody. Of his spare 
means, amounting at one time to fifty thousand dollars 
in United States Sixes, there was unfortunately not a 
cent left when he got through with a fast trotter which, 
in admiration for one of our gallant generals, whose 
friendship Dexter enjoyed, he had christened John A. 
Logan. His love and admiration for the horse, stimu- 
lated by crafty trainers and treacherous jockeys, who 
made him believe that the two-minute gait of the other 
fellow's nag was a mere funeral procession, amounted 
to infatuation and eventually stripped him of much of 
his wealth. 

Prepare to Go to War — First Illinois Cavalry and 
Shawneetown. — The gigantic eruption of the Civil 
War now began to spread its dark cloud of death-deal- 
ing carnage over the land; it shattered fortunes; de- 
stroyed men's occupations and support; and disas- 
trously affected nearly every citizen of the republic. It 
found me with a piece of property which for the time 
was absolutely without value and easily perishable, 
deeply involved in debt. This state of affairs thus for- 
bade that I should throw up my hand and shoulder a 
musket. During the summer, however, I diligently 
watched the course of events, and when, early in No- 
vember, information came that the Illinois border on 
the lower Ohio needed protection against threatened 
raids from the south side of the river, I promptly un- 
tied the hawser of my boat from the ringbolt on Port- 
land wharf, hove her ancher, and laying the "Fanny 
Bullitt's" course southward, made my way to Shawnee- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 39 

town, Illinois, where, in co-operation with the first 
Illinois cavalry, I took a hand in the fray as best I 
could. 

Fort Donaldson, Good Mother Bickerdyke and an 
Eminent Surgeon Who Was a Brute. — For want of 
letters of marque, or other power from lawful author- 
ity, either federal or state, I entered the lists of my own 
volition and risk as a free lance. The most important 
events of this raid, together with a detailed account of 
the "Fanny's" subsequent trip from Fort Donaldson 
down the Cumberland and up the Ohio, with two hun- 
dred wounded and dying men, the Tennessee river 
campaign, and other interesting matter, I have re- 
counted in another paper, the perusal of which I can 
recommend to him who has patience, and in whom 
"increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on." 

War, General Sherman says, is hell. This savage 
pastime, instead of being glorified, should be abhorred 
as too brutal for civilized man to engage in. "The of- 
fense is rank, it smells to heaven." 

I have told, in my account of the trip from Fort 
Donaldson, how good Mrs. Bickerdyke accompanied 
us part of the way. I have neglected, however, to tell 
how there turned up on board, the same night, a cele- 
brated surgeon. He hailed from Cincinnati, and was 
not in the service. During that doleful night I learned 
to know and detest this skillful man cordially. With 
several students in his wake he was on a hunt for 
wounds of rare occurrence upon which to demonstrate ; 
but callously refused, in the face of death even, to give 
relief, however cruel the suffering, in cases other than 



40 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

the ones he specially sought. When, during the night, 
he found a victim with the lower jaw shattered by a 
ragged edged shrapnel, this heartless butcher, with 
much gusto, had him dragged to a table in the barber- 
shop, where, without the balm of anaesthetics, he tor- 
mented the poor fellow by deliberately and cruelly delv- 
ing and rooting for half an hour in the quivering flesh 
and living gore of the sufferer. 

A Shrapnel and a Crushed Jaw. — The sight of 
crushed and splintered bone, minced flesh, shattered 
teeth, and shreds of the tongue, filled me with horror 
as I stood helplessly by. When I could endure the tor- 
ture no longer I ordered the butcher to desist and let 
the boy die in peace. The fancied glories of war, with 
flowing plumes, shining brass, alarums from drum and 
trumpet, and the waving of colored bunting, had no 
charm for me thenceforth. And when years after- 
ward, during the Cuban war, I was induced to make a 
flag presentation speech to an Indiana regiment, my 
talk was as empty of enthusiasm as the soldier's can- 
teen is of refreshment after a day's march in summer 
heat. 

Sale of the "Fanny Bullitt." — When, late in 1863, it 
became apparent that extensive repairs to the steamer, 
the cost of which much exceeded the length of my 
purse, were imperative, I sold the "Fanny Bullitt," and 
with part of the proceeds paid accumulated indebted- 
ness. On casting up accounts, I found to my great de- 
light that for the first time in life I was free from debt 
and possessed of several thousand dollars in hard cash. 
This discovery was as soothing as flannel is to bruises. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 4I 

With a sigh of relief I could not help but cry out, "The 
night is long that never finds the day." And like 
Rosalind, in my joy would have kissed all who have a 
sweet breath. 

I now started in afresh to wrestle with stubborn 
fate, over which I had thus gained the first victory; 
and which, with industry, perseverance, and fresh 
chalk on my cue, I hoped in time to further bend to my 
purposes. 

E. P. & C. Packet Co. — To get a footing in the 
lower Ohio transportation business I bought an inter- 
est in the steamer "Bo wen," and also joined Captain 
Dexter in the purchase of the fine new steamer "Cou- 
rier," a powerful and elegantly appointed big boat ; and 
soon thereafter the fast side-wheeler "Superior" and 
other craft came into our possession; and when the 
business of the Evansville, Paducah and Cairo Packet 
Company continued to increase, we incorporated with 
our competitors, and assembled quite a respectable lit- 
tle navy, of which Dexter became president, I the 
superintendent and manager, and such first-class navi- 
gators and business men as Grammer, Fowler, De- 
Souchet, Throop, Gilbert and others, directors and 
commanders. These, my erstwhile associates, have all 
but one gone to "that undiscover'd country from whose 
bourne no traveler returns." Captain Grammer alone 
is living, and has, by superior ability, become a promi- 
nent official in one of the leading railroads of the coun- 
try. 

Trip to Italy. — In the winter of 1866, to gratify a 
wish ardently cherished from boyhood days, I visited 



42 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

"Sunny Italy," where, much interested in painting and 
sculpture, I remained six months enjoying to the full 
the attractions of nature and art in that interesting 
country. Then, in early spring, on receipt of disquiet- 
ing news from home, I recrossed the Alps by stage- 
coach and snow-sled, and from Liverpool sailed for 
America. 

Packet Company Disrupted. — On my return to 
Evansville I found the packet company disrupted and 
its property divided out in severalty among the owners 
of the stock. This contretemps had been brought on 
by an irrepressible conflict, instigated and pugna- 
ciously persisted in by "old man" Dexter, whose ant- 
lers, always obstructive, became seriously entangled 
with the horns of other members of the corporation. 

Steanter "MayHower." — Here again envious fortune 
had dealt me a blow in the solar plexus. The loss on 
stock in the company amounted to over half of my in- 
vestment ; and when later on I succeeded in selling the 
"Mayflower," in which boat my remaining interest had 
been cast, she had made such additional losses that the 
Katzenjammer this produced determined me to aban- 
don steamboating permanently. 

Steamer ''Idletmld." — The next year, nevertheless, 
once more I joined some of the old associates, and we 
built the side-wheel steamer "Idlewild." She was a 
beautiful clipper of faultless proportions, proud and 
jaunty appearance, and as speedy as she was hand- 
some. This boat paid for herself in just two years, and 
then sold for what she had cost to build, namely, sixty 
thousand dollars. An investment of several thousand 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 43 

dollars, made at the same time, in the "Robert Mit- 
chel," a large Cincinnati and New Orleans freight 
steamer, proved, however, a total loss. 

Other Steamboat Losses, — From this time on I aban- 
doned steamboat investments. Those of my associates 
who continued in the business were eventually routed, 
or gradually starved out by the iron horse. One of 
these unfortunates, my venerable friend Captain Stutt 
Neal, a few years after the war, built the magnificent 
steamer "Richmond" and lost in less than two seasons 
a quarter of a million dollars by the investment, which 
loss consumed the accumulations of a lifetime. When 
railroads began to parallel our waterways the days of 
prosperity on the rivers were numbered ; and most men 
who stuck to the business in course of time lost all they 
had made. 

The heaviest investment of capital in western steam- 
boat stock during flush times was that of the Atlantic 
Steamship Company of St. Louis. In the late sixties 
its losses and the destruction of life became enormous ; 
much of it from explosion of boilers. The ante-bellum 
practice of racing and criminally crowding the boilers 
had been by this time measurably abandoned and had 
little to do with these disastrous occurrences. The 
cause was mainly found in the use of tubular boilers, 
which, as substitutes for the old kind with large return 
flues, were not fitted to the heavily silt-laden and 
muddy waters of the Mississippi. One explosion, that 
of the side-wheel steamer "Pat Claybourn," a fifty- 
thousand-dollar packet, fell to the lot of our company. 
It killed Captain Dick Fowler, her able and popular 



44 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

commander, and a number of her crew. We also, in 
course of time, sustained the loss of two more boats — 
one of them by fire and the other in a storm. Some of 
this property was partially covered by insurance, on 
which the premium rate in those days was so extrava- 
gant that it consumed much of the earnings. 

Explosion of the "Missouri." — During the period of 
these disastrous occurrences the "Missouri," one of the 
St. Louis Company's largest steamers, while ascending 
the Ohio one night, blew up and sank a few miles 
above Evansville. The next morning early, with one 
of our packet boats, just in from Cairo, I went to the 
wreck, which was submerged to the hurricane deck 
and deserted. A steamer which had passed the wreck 
in the night had taken off the survivors, including the 
disabled captain, and continued its voyage to Cincin- 
nati. In the wreck we found, lying on her bed and 
submerged in the water, the steam-scalded body of the 
captain's wife, which we properly cared for, and from 
under the debris of the office the safe containing a large 
amount of money was secured ; all else was abandoned 
to the waves. The boat, aside from her cargo, valued 
at over one hundred thousand dollars, had been so 
badly shattered that no attempt was ever made to raise 
the wreck. 

Life on the River Was Pleasant. — Travel on the 
packet line was liberally patronized, and counted among 
its patrons many of the best people from towns and 
cities of Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. This made 
life socially quite attractive, and as our boats always 
carried musical cabin crews, dancing, in which the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 45 

officers of the boat frequently joined, was popular and 
much indulged in. 

Winter of Seventy-one in New Orleans. — The 
winter of seventy-one and two I spent quietly in the city 
of New Orleans feasting on oysters and teal duck, and 
enjoying Mardi Gras and its festivities at the French 
opera. A lucky turn in sugar made me even with my 
three months' expense account. In early spring, while 
there, I accepted an invitation to visit the Bayou Teche 
country. The president of the navigation company, on 
one of its boats, made this visit into Evangeline's 
Acadia very pleasant to Joseph Medill of the Chicago 
Tribune and his family, who were of the party, and my- 
self. 

At a season when the upper country is yet held in 
icy bonds, and ear-muffs are desirable, a vista of 
southwestern Louisiana is charming. Here the um- 
brageous live oaks, with wide spreading limbs and dark 
succulent foliage, stud verdant meadows and green 
fields. Red roses and creamy lilies cluster around the 
stately white plantation residences surrounded by spa- 
cious galleries, and make charming pictures for the 
hungry gaze of the visitor from the north. 

Savannah, Ga. — On the way south by rail, via Wash- 
ington and Richmond, I had visited my friend Farrill 
at Savannah. He and his chum, a rich young Cuban 
from Havana, made my stay in the charming Georgia 
city of ever verdant parks very pleasant. A unique 
spot near the town is the old cemetery of Bonaven- 
tura. Here gigantic live oaks, with their sturdy far- 
reaching limbs, extend back into past and bygone ages. 



46 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

They stand in somber ranks, draped with Spanish moss, 
and resemble a mysteriously veiled mis eric or dia, ever 
weeping tears which in copious streams flow silently to 
the sunless earth beneath. 

Negro Rule in the South, — In the reconstruction 
days, when in the southland the negro for a time was 
very much to the fore, ebony-hued and tan-colored 
statesmen of Louisiana, in the legislative halls at New 
Orleans, used to maintain a regular bargain counter, 
where franchises and privileges of all sorts were kept 
for sale. 

During my stay in the Crescent City there came one 
day a St. Louis acquaintance, a sort of pelican in 
gum shoes. He stepped so softly that he could have 
walked on the keyboard of a piano from St. Paul 
to New York without striking a chord. He tempted 
me with a proposition made him by members of 
the negro legislature then in session. The "nig- 
gers" offered a steamship charter and a body of 
valuable public land worth a good many hundred 
thousand for the paltry sum of thirty thousand dollars 
in cash. The charter was a mere blind and make-be- 
lieve. It did not stipulate the termini of the line nor 
the number of sailings, and was criminally vague and 
flimsy. Tunstal (that was the St. Louis man's name) 
and I had much amusing chaff with the boodlers, who, 
eager for graft, were kept nibbling until we gave them 
the ha, ha, and backed ourselves away from their royal 
presence and out of the city. 

Serious mistakes in reconstructing the seceded states 
were undoubtedly made by congress after the war. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 47 

Charles Sumner in the senate, and Thad Stevens in 
the house, led in making such laws as were demanded 
by the implacable and fierce spirit of resentment then 
prevalent in the north. The assassin's bullet which 
ended Lincoln's life and laid low that comprehensive 
mind and tender heart had destroyed the south's best 
friend. 

The rapacious carpet-bagger and ravenous scalawag, 
together with bad men in the Freedmen's Bureau, man- 
aged affairs in such manner as completely to disfran- 
chise the whites, turn over all political power to the 
ignorant black fieldhands just out of slavery, and sub- 
ject the taxpayers to the mercy of hungry and piratical 
buzzards from the north. 

The dark-brown legislatures, of which the Louisiana 
General Assembly then sitting in New Orleans was a 
fair specimen, taxed the war-impoverished and bank- 
rupt white people up to the point of confiscation ; and 
in addition loaded their respective states with moun- 
tains of indebtedness, the proceeds of which were fool- 
ishly squandered and shamelessly stolen. None of the 
loot ever found its way to the relief of the poverty and 
distress then prevailing and left behind in the wake of 
a destructive war. 

A Hurricane, — In the progress of this narrative I 
have neglected to relate an experience in a summer 
night's hurricane on the catfish-inhabited waters of the 
Ohio, which came near destroying the fine steamer 
"Courier," of which I was part owner and at that time 
the commander, and which endangered the lives of 
nearly one hundred passengers and the crew. The 



48 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

rough and blustery weather had kept me from going oif 
watch at midnight. Too cautious to risk a landing on 
the exposed Illinois shore at Cave in Rock, I had, at 
two in the morning, just sent the mail-bags ashore in 
the yawl, when a blast, roaring like a charge from 
heavy cavalry, struck the boat with mighty power on 
the starboard bow and laid her over on her "beam 
ends." The tremendous blow, when it hit the rudder, 
parted the iron tiller-chain, and, unmanageable as the 
boat thus became, gave her over helplessly to the storm. 

At least nine-tenths of the bulk of a steamer navigat- 
ing our western rivers, obstructed as they are by bars 
and shoals, necessarily must be above and out of the 
water, and consequently such a boat is hard to handle in 
a storm. The current in the river also must be reckoned 
with, and altogether the management of a craft thus 
topheavy in rough weather requires much skill, nerve 
and judgment on the part of the pilot. 

On the hurricane deck, where I stood unprotected, 
one of the stays of the smoke stacks caught and saved 
me from being blown overboard. Then a signal tap on 
the big bell, which, amidst the roaring noise of the 
storm sounded like a muffled explosion, called me to 
the pilot house, which I could reach only by crawling 
on all fours up the exposed ladder way and over the 
blast-swept roof of the texas. Here I had great diffi- 
culty to hear the pilot's words, but learned that, the 
steering gear crippled, the boat was completely out of 
his control. With tight clutching, and in much danger 
of being ballooned like an airship, I crawled back, and 
slid on down to the lower deck, where quickly I or- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 49 

dered the anchor cast, which fortunately caught and 
held fast as the boat drifted over the bar. She now- 
swung to the wind, and was thus saved from being 
blown into the overhanging timber on shore ; and when 
she righted up and the strain on her upper works was 
relieved, the cabin, already toppling, settled back and 
was thus saved from going overboard. 

Panic among the passengers had by this time become 
uncontrollable. The women, squirming and wriggling 
on the cabin floor, shrieked, and in agonized tones 
begged to be saved. In their fright, the whole mourn- 
ers' bench "confessed the Lamb" and prayed for salva- 
tion. The men, frightened out of their wits, mostly 
cowards, sought safety in the hold of the boat and in 
the engine-room on the lower deck. One only of all 
the passengers, a little shrimp of a man by the name of 
Smith, from Caseyville, Kentucky, kept his wits about 
him. When the storm had blown out all the lights and 
darkness reigned everywhere the old man lit up the 
candle in a lantern he happened to carry with him, and 
by its dim glimmer strove to comfort and reassure the 
moaning women and whimpering children. He also 
saw to it that every cabin door was kept closed and 
locked. Had the doors been allowed to swing open 
the cabin surely would have gone overboard and its 
inmates with it, and many lives have been lost by 
drowning in the maddened waters of the storm-swept 
river. 

Passing on the return trip in daylight the locality of 
the hurricane's devastation, we followed with our eyes 
its trace up a sloping hillside through the woods on the 
5 



50 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Kentucky shore. The track was swept clean of every 
standing tree, and their mighty trunks lay flat upon the 
ground, like the swath of a mower in a field of grain. 

Wreck of the ''Belmont" in a Storm. — The destruc- 
tive violence and consequent loss of life on a river craft 
caught in one of these fierce blows was brought to my 
special notice, when, many years afterward, on a hot 
Sunday in August, I assisted in wrecking the steamer 
"Belmont," which had turned turtle in the Ohio be- 
tween Evansville and Henderson, Kentucky, also 
caused by a hurricane. I shall never forget when the 
tearing away of the cabin bulkheads released the im- 
prisoned dead, how their bodies, black with decomposi- 
tion and swelled like balloons, shot up out of the water 
as if they were rockets. They came head foremost, as 
do furies and specters out of traps on the stage of a 
theater ; and foul gases from decomposition tainted the 
air on that hot summer day. The reflection that our 
erstwhile impending fate at Cave in Rock might have 
been the same horrified me, and with Falstaff I ex- 
claimed, not "how would I look" but how would I 
smell, if I were swollen in the water. 

The victims of this wreck were mostly people I had 
known as near neighbors in Evansville, and with whom 
I had held intimate social relations; but their immer- 
sion for a couple of days in the tepid waters of the 
river, under the ardent rays of an August sun, affected 
such radical changes that I could look upon them, men 
and women alike, with loathing only. Your fleshless 
skeleton is a veritable Chesterfield in comparison with 
the swollen carcass as it exhales foul putrefaction and 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 5 1 

Stares upon you with eyes wide open, set in an inflated 
face black as depair itself. 

Steamer ''Superior" High and Dry. — At another time 
the "Superior," a large side-wheeler, while under my 
command, came to grief one night. A little below 
Caseyville, shortly after eight bells, 

The Queen of Night, whose large command 
Rules all the sea and half the land, 
Was then declining to the west 
To go to bed and take her rest. 

and had, just below the shallow crossing, with slanting 
rays, lighted up the smoothly-shelving rocks on the 
Kentucky shore and made them and the glassy surface 
of the river appear as one. 

Pilot Barney Seals. — Barney Seals, one of the pilots, 
when, after supper, he came on watch, was under the 
influence of liquor and had, in spite of contrary orders, 
insisted on taking the wheel. In his dazed condition he 
mistook the wet glistening reef for the channel's sur- 
face, and in spite of my warning, held the boat's course 
so as to run her, under a full head of steam, amidst 
volleys from snapping stanchions and cracking timbers, 
full length on to the rocks. 

Under the federal navigation laws pilots are en- 
trusted with much authority, and when on duty at the 
wheel rank the captain of the vessel. When sober 
Barney used to be one of the best pilots on the river ; 
but when drunk he, like most men, would make mis- 
takes, and mistakes of this sort are dangerous and ex- 
pensive affairs. This one cost Barney his job, which 



52 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

at the time paid a hundred and fifty per month, and 
cost the company a large dock and repair bill and loss 
of the boat's service for a time. The locality where 
this happened serves me as a reminder of an interesting 
episode. 

Clemens and Warner, in ''The Gilded Age," Have 
Trouble with a Name. — Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain) 
tells how he and Warner, when they wrote the book 
called ''The Gilded Age," had an experience with a 
certain Mr, Sellers. The fact is that, in connection with 
the very same person, I also, later on, had an experi- 
ence. Mr. Clemens says : "There is a character in the 
book called 'Sellers.' I do not remember what his first 
name was in the beginning; but any way Mr. Warner 
did not like it, and wanted it improved. He asked me 
if I was able to imagine a person named 'Eschol Sel- 
lers.' Of course I said I could not, without stimulants. 
He said that way out west once he had met, and con- 
templated, and actually shaken hands with a man bear- 
ing that impossible name, 'Eschol Sellers.' He added : 
Tt was twenty years ago ; his name has probably car- 
ried him off before this ; and if it hasn't he will never 
see the book anyhow. We will confiscate his name. 
The name you are using is common, and therefore 
dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellerses 
bearing it, and the whole horde will come after us ; but 
Eschol Sellers is a safe name. It is a rock.' So we 
borrowed that name ; and when the book had been out 
about a week one of the stateliest and handsomest and 
most aristocratic looking white men that ever lived 
called around, with the most formidable libel suit in 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 53 

his pocket that ever — well, in brief, we got his per- 
mission to suppress an edition of ten million (or there- 
abouts) copies of the book, and change that name to 
'Mulberry Sellers' in future editions." Thus far, Mark 
Twain. 

How I got into Trouble with the same Colonel Sel- 
lers. — Caseyville, on the lower Ohio, where, as related 
above, the "Superior" was wrecked is, or rather was, 
the home of my friend Mr. Sam Casey, a brother-in- 
law of General Grant. Just opposite and across the 
river from this Kentucky town, in the knobs of Hardin 
county, Illinois, is "Sellers' Landing." Here lives, or 
did live, when alive, Mr. Sellers, the Eschol Sellers of 
Mark Twain's book. He was, as described by Mr. 
Clemens, a very handsome man of aristocratic bearing 
and appearance, kind-hearted and very courteous. 
Sprung from a distinguished old Philadelphia family, 
he had been educated in mechanical engineering, and, 
as an inventor of a process of making paper from cane, 
had selected this locality for the erection of a hundred- 
thousand-dollar paper mill. When the government es- 
tablished a postoffice at his place, our line of boats 
served it regularly, and it was thus that I came to know 
the silver-haired, genial old gentleman, who was the 
embodiment of the milk of human kindness in its con- 
densed form. 

It was the comical sound only of the unusual front 
name of Mr. Sellers which attracted the authors ; but 
had they known the peculiarities of the man as well as 
I knew them they would not have given up that name 
without a struggle. No better pattern for their hero 



54 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

could have been found anywhere. The one-hundred- 
thousand-dollar paper mill, with "millions in it," that 
he had erected, in which the cane from the near-by river 
bottoms was to be shot out of big guns to tear asunder 
its fiber, proved it. The mill, idle and abandoned, for 
many years stood on the hillside above the river, a 
monument to impracticability and failure. 

Some years later, at the suggestion of my friend Gil 
Shanklin, the owner and editor of the Evansville 
Courier, I wrote up for his paper one day, in a rollick- 
ing editorial, the foregoing facts, and embellished the 
skit by referring to the passage in "The Gilded Age," 
in which Colonel Sellers tells his young friend Hawkins 
that he and the Rothschilds are going to buy up one 
hundred and thirteen wildcat banks in Ohio, Indiana, 
Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri, and make forty mil- 
lions by it; and also touched on the well-known eye- 
water scheme. 

This editorial, with its thinly-veiled allusions, natur- 
ally gave offense to Mr. Sellers, who much disliked 
that kind of notoriety. When in time it leaked out 
from the sanctum of the paper that I had been the per- 
petrator, I also, like Clemens and Warner, was threat- 
ened with a lawsuit, which I am now satisfied I richly 
deserved. It was averted only by sand-papered apolo- 
gies and friendly intercessions from others. 

Postmaster's Daughter. — On the Illinois shore below 
Golconda there was in those days a postoffice and mail 
landing called Breckenridge. The little garden of the 
postmaster's family was full of flowers and the house 
bright with pictures. The people had come there from 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 55 

Cincinnati and had seen better days. When, now and 
then, I stepped ashore from my boat to give Molly, the 
postmaster's daughter, a late magazine or piece of new- 
music, I never failed to receive a sweet smile from her 
large brown eyes shaded with long lashes, or a rose 
from the pretty garden. When, after a while, the mail 
schedules changed and the family left for other parts, 
I grieved. Since then "the mill has gone to decay, 
Ben Bolt," the postoffice long years ago was discon- 
tinued, but as the echo of sweet symphonies like a faint 
zephyr floats out from the lamp-lighted cottage, 
through the dusky shadows of the trees on a summer's 
night, so the vision of the maiden with the brown, 
liquid eyes on the banks of la belle riviere yet trips 
lightly through the halls of memory and resurrects in 
me blissful recollections of youth. 

Cashier of a National Bank. — On returning from the 
south to Indiana I became cashier of the Merchants' 
National of Evansville, in which bank I was then a 
stockholder and director; and following the advice of 
my friend Heilman to get into manufacturing, I bought 
an interest in a woolen factory. This was between 
thirty and forty years ago. Then the little mill had one 
set of cards. In the course of the years it grew to many 
times its original dimensions, and, under good manage- 
ment, made money. Since then over-building, reverses 
and incompetent management wrecked the business; 
and as individual endorser on the paper, much of the 
indebtedness, amounting to a very large sum of money, 
fell to me, which, when paid, left me sore and dis- 
gruntled. 



56 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Nominated for the Legislature — My Victorious Op- 
ponent Ruined by Poker, — One summer, it was in the 
year 1870, I paid a visit to my friend Haines, who 
lived at that time on the Maine coast, but who since 
then has married an ItaHan lady and gone to live in her 
villa on Lake Como, Italy. It was while in Maine eat- 
ing lobster and dancing attendance upon the fair sex 
that I was, without my knowledge or consent, nomi- 
nated by a Vanderburgh county republican convention 
for member of the Indiana legislature. Afterward in 
the race, however, I was defeated at the polls by Wel- 
born, my democratic opponent. Welborn, a man of 
good family and fine presence, was newly married to 
an estimable and cultured lady, a cousin of Secretary 
of State John Hay. On his advent at the state capital 
he fell headlong into a poker game, butted wildly 
against Capricornus, and straddled antes and opened 
jack-pots so recklessly that he was soon stripped of all 
he had. After the close of the session he left the state 
and never returned. Let us, however, not forget that 
"men differ so in their virtues, and are so alike in their 
transgressions," and not judge harshly. 

"Citizens' " Fire Insurance Company. — Under one of 
the old Indiana charters a dozen of us Evansvillians 
now organized the Citizens' Fire and Marine Insurance 
Company. I was made treasurer, and when, several 
years afterward, we reinsured our risks and disbanded 
the company, I paid its stockholders four for one. 

Evansville Land Association and President of Street 
Car Line. — After that, when the Evansville Land Asso- 
ciation, the owner of much land and many lots, had con- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 57 

structed and opened for traffic the Evansville street 
railway, I bought a block of the land company's stock 
and became its secretary and treasurer, and later on 
president of the mule line. But when, in a couple of 
years, the demand for corner lots began to ebb and the 
mules became windbroken and wheezy, I embraced the 
first opportunity to dispose of my forty-thousand-dollar 
share in the company without loss, rang the bell and 
took a transfer. Business with the company afterward, 
when times grew dull, began to languish. The street 
cars made no money; the lands and lots did not sell; 
and in course of time the company's property was well- 
nigh consumed by taxes, assessments and interest on 
the investment. 

Taxes and interest, the only real perpetuum mobile 
ever invented, are never at rest ; and "like the little busy 
bees, improve each shining hour" incessantly. "All 
that glitters is not gold," and corner lots frequently are 
no better than Chicago options or Wall street stocks. 
"When offered to be let in on a deal at the ground floor, 
and in doubt," John Graham says, "take the elevator to 
the roof garden at once." 

Ohio River Commission. — While yet on the river, 
Governor Conrad Baker appointed me member of an 
Ohio river commission, selected from the following 
seven states bordering on or near that river : Pennsyl- 
vania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois 
and Tennessee. Ex-Governor Moorhead of Pennsyl- 
vania became its president, and General Laz Noble, 
myself and three other Hoosiers served for Indiana. 
After years of persistent lobbying with congress for 



58 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

appropriation of funds, and by harmonious cooperation 
with the United States Engineering Corps, we grad- 
ually succeeded in committing the general government 
to the present poHcy of progressive improvement of 
the Ohio and its navigation. Colonel Merrill, of the 
United States engineers, a man of ability and resource, 
then in charge of the river, initiated the Chanoine sys- 
tem of movable dams largely used in France, and built 
the first one of that class at Davis Island near Pitts- 
burg. 

I and my associates on this commission for a dozen 
years industriously preached the gospel of internal im- 
provement, in river conventions from Pittsburg and 
Cincinnati to Cairo and Memphis, and traveled back 
and forth to and from Washington for the purpose of 
lobbying with congress and its committees. We gave 
time and spent our money on railroad fare and hotel 
bills, but we Indianians received not one cent in reim- 
bursement for outlay nor compensation for work done. 
Indiana legislatures had no money to spend for the 
betterment of the extensive river coast of the state. 
Pennsylvania, Ohio and most of the other states made 
compensation, or restitution at least, to their represent- 
atives on the commission. Though poorer in purse, I 
have small regrets, and find much satisfaction in the 
consciousness of having lent a helpful hand in the effort 
to improve navigation on that great river upon whose 
bosom I spent so many years of my young life, hard at 
work and happy under the cheering smiles of Dame 
Prosperity. 

A broken jaw, the result of a runaway, did not long 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 59 

keep me incapacitated and away from the realization of 
a long-cherished project. 

St. George Hotel. — As the Spanish manana (to-mor- 
row) never satisfied me for what could be done to-day, 
I again took up the subject of the erection of a hotel. 
The city of Evansville had long suffered from the want 
of adequate hotel accommodations, and stood in sore 
need of a hostelry with up-to-date comforts and ap- 
pointments. Mr. Mackey, the man who later on became 
owner of many railroads, joined me in the enterprise ; 
and when our citizens in a patriotic spirit had sub- 
scribed a bonus of between forty and fifty thousand 
dollars, we, commensurate with their liberality, en- 
larged our scheme from the original plan to an ex- 
penditure of a quarter of a million. 

/ Take Unto Myself a Wife. — The opening days of 
the year 1874 found the St. George Hotel, containing 
one hundred and twenty guest chambers, completed for 
the accommodation of the public. On New Year's 
day, simultaneously with the completion of this enter- 
prise, and in fulfillment of the Scriptural injunction, I 
took unto myself "for better, for worse, for richer, for 
poorer," a rib. And for the first time learned 

What Adam dreamt of, when his bride 
Came from her closet in his side, 

and began to appreciate Butler's lines. 

How fair and sweet the planted rose 
Beyond the wild in hedgerows grows ! 
Though Paradise were e'er so fair 
It was not kept so without care. 



60 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

My wife and I were the first to occupy the big house, 
yet unfurnished. She, a tiny bird in a mighty cage, en- 
joyed the contrast greatly, and I, lord of the manor, felt 
important as "monarch of all I surveyed." 

The usual opening festivities, with profuse decora- 
tions, music, feasting and flamboyant toasts, took place 
the following month, when a brilliant company of "gal- 
lant men and beautiful women" (as the country editor 
puts it), from Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and other 
neighboring states disported themselves within the 
walls of the new hostelry. The good cheer of the feast, 
where the rum in the punch was not aniline dye, and 
the gaiety of the night's fun was such that its flavor, 
like the aroma of a choice old vintage, lingered with our 
guests far beyond our portal. 

A Murderous Cook. — The chef de cuisine, a hand- 
some fellow, tall and stately, with the easy self-assur- 
ance of vaudeville actor, wore his "Hyperion curls," 
adorned by a cap of Persian lamb's wool, with much 
pretense. As Monsieur La Pierre, he claimed to hail 
from the Hotel Continental in Paris; but later on I 
proved him to be not a Parisian, but a Bulgarian with 
the cut-throat, piratical name of Dematrakopolos. He, 
nevertheless, like Vatel, the great Conde's cook, was a 
master of his art, and could, when occasion required, 
prepare and serve dishes ornamental and dainty to the 
queen's taste. But when after a time he learned that, 
in consequence of neglecting the daily menu, and get- 
ting sloppy over his maccaroni, he was about to lose the 
place, he, behind locked doors in the carving-room one 
day, while in a drunken rage, and kicking like a crazy 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 6l 

kangaroo, came very near cutting my throat with a 
long and glittering carving-knife, and only the softest 
of fur-lined speech and the promise of a cool bottle re- 
leased my ear from the stocks. 

Bloody War between the Kitchen Crew and Dining- 
room Men. — It was not long after this that, with his 
successor, a German by the name of Jake Meyer, from 
Chicago, who claimed to be the original Delmonico^ 
himself, I fared worse. At one time when the house 
was full of guests and I was serving a swell banquet to 
a distinguished party, he stole my wine and floated his 
cookhouse crew and all the scullions of the kitchen in 
champagne. A lively ruction thereupon resulted be- 
tween the drunken "Dutch" and the "nigger" dining- 
room battalion. The darkies were commanded by Mr. 
George Washington, an Ethiopian with lots of sand in 
his craw, whom I encouraged with the Latin slogan 
"Soc-et-tuum." In this scrimmage the Prussian forces 
came off with bloody noses and their tetes carries sorely 
battered, while the guests of the house had to do with- 
out their Wiener Schnitzel and go to bed hungry that 
night. 

/ Sell My Interest in the Hotel. — I was now a mar- 
ried man and longed for that peaceful life which matri- 
mony promises, when the baby hasn't the colic. I had 
chopped logic with the philosophers in the porticos of 
the baths (Hot Springs, Arkansas) ; had discussed bad 
eggs on the stump with politicians; had been in mid- 
night rows with lunatics; fought "Riley the wrecker" 
and his crew of wild Irishmen on the banks of the 
Tennessee; been shot at by Confederates and guer- 



6i REMINISCENCES OF AN INDlANIAN 

rillas; and had run the gauntlet of mobs and muti- 
neers. Then, when my partner, Mr. Mackey, at the 
end of six months, finding me tired of the business of 
hotel keeping and worn out, consented to buy my half 
interest in the hotel, which was now becoming profit- 
able; and when Mr. Perry Huston assumed the man- 
agement and direction of drunken and murderous 
cooks, I retired gleefully and with alacrity from the 
roasting-spit and the broiler, and, in embroidered slip- 
pers and satin-lined smoking jacket, took to reading 
"Huckleberry Fin" and the "Ingoldsby Legends." 

During the succeeding two or three years, having 
now abandoned the roses and raptures of free and easy 
bachelordom and devoted myself to the lilies and lan- 
guor of virtuous married bliss, as with us time ambled 
withal, and the lazy foot of time stole on apace, the 
birth of the first child opened up a fresh interest in life. 
I now began to give some of my time to the fireside 
and the barnyard, and as gradually the bank account 
had been sufficiently reinforced and parapeted to keep 
the wolf from the door, and the stork continued to busy 
himself, my head began to lay quite easy on its pillow 
of contentment. 

Decline Offer of a Distillery. — Just antedating the 
prosecutions by the government of the nefarious 
Whisky Ring, which ruined a number of distillers 
and under President Grant cost many an employe and 
government official his freedom, I one day followed 
the tempter of avarice up into the mountain, to be 
shown the glittering promises of the whisky business. 
Fortunately, however, by bringing my helm hard 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 63 

a-port and luffing the jib in time, I turned aside the 
offer of an interest in a distillery, and with Solomon 
determined, that "Better is a dinner of herbs where love 
is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." The friend 
from whom came the tempting offer was subsequently 
drawn into the destructive maelstrom and, after barely 
escaping state's prison, died a paralytic and in poverty. 
Into and Out of a Grain Elevator — Successor Drops 
Hundred Thousand Dollars. — Having in fancied right- 
eousness escaped from Scylla, I now, by blindly buying 
into a grain elevator, fell into danger of being swal- 
lowed by Charybdis. It was not, however, long be- 
fore the disturbing conviction dawned upon me that 
Baker, the managing partner of the business, was a 
frenzied operator in options, who continually, in the 
Chicago grain pit, fought the tiger. The historic cow 
that started the Chicago fire which had burned up a 
consignment of oats I was carrying at the time, had 
cost me so much money that caution was thereafter 
constantly on the qui vive. So when, at a small con- 
cession, a victim was found willing to swallow the 
lobster alive without tying his claws, and release me 
from dreaded risk and complications in the elevator, I 
stepped out and retired from "the dead line." A big 
wheat deal subsequently cost my successor in the ele- 
vator business the snug sum of one hundred thousand 
dollars, and ere long he quit, "a shorn lamb," and it 
was thus that he "came by the loss" of his fortune, and 
I, like Foxy Quiller, having taken down my ante, es- 
caped with but a small contribution to that plate 



64 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

which never ceases to pass. "Some must watch while 
some must sleep. Thus runs the world away." 

City Treasurer of Evansville. — I now found spare 
time and inclination to make the race for city treasurer 
of Evansville, a place of moderate emolument and big 
bond, and was in the spring of 1876 elected for one 
year, but at the end of the term declined a renomina- 
tion, and discouraged the proposition of some republi- 
can friends to put me up for mayor. The refusal on 
my part to run for mayor was sorely disappointing to 
my good mother, who remembered pleasantly, from her 
childhood days, a Lord Mayor's show in London, where 
she was born. She, motherlike, had in a dream one 
night long years ago seen "her eldest" wear the robes 
of a lord mayor, which vision she firmly believed would 
some day become a reality. 

Receiver in Bankruptcy. — The year following, one 
of the wholesale dry goods houses of the city failed in 
business for a couple of hundred thousand. At the re- 
quest of the banks interested I was appointed assignee 
by the court. The sale and distribution of the large 
stock of goods, the collection of outstandings, and the 
distribution of the proceeds among creditors consumed 
over a year and required my undivided attention dur- 
ing that time. 

Nomination for Sheriff of Vanderburg County 
Forced Upon Me. — One day in the summer of seventy- 
eight as I was passing Lawyers' Row on Third street, 
Colonel Buchanan called me into an inner room of his 
office. Within I found in caucus assembled a number 
of representative republicans, who stunned me with 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 65 

the information that I had been selected to stand for 
sheriff of the county in the approaching autumn elec- 
tion. Vanderburg county was then very close. Both 
parties claimed it, and upon the careful selection of 
the candidates was to depend the outcome of a hard 
and laborious political fight. In spite of an ardent de- 
sire to escape I was thus once more at the bidding 
of the party to be harnessed to the galley of politics. 
Protestations on my part, that as hangman and lord 
high executioner I would be a dismal failure, did 
not serve as an excuse. Failing by this argument to 
win the gentlemen to my way of thinking I was re- 
minded of the ruse of Madame de Maintenon's butler, 
who, when during dinner the meat ran short, whispered 
to the mistress of Louis XIV, "Give them another 
story." With this anecdote in my mind and hoping to 
create a favorable diversion, I told the caucus with 
appropriate frills how once upon a time my friend, the 
Honorable Edward G., had on the occasion of a visit 
to his children living in Arkansas, taken them, as con- 
tribution to a Thanksgiving dinner, a two-bushel basket 
full of fried oysters, and how this allopathic dose had 
made them all sick. Everybody present knew the 
Honorable Mr. G., and this anecdote created much 
merriment. "This nomination, gentlemen," I said, "is 
like my friend's mountain of fried oysters, cold, clammy 
and cadaverous, hard to swallow and difficult of assimi- 
lation. I have no liking for the mess, nor stomach for 
its digestion. Unhand me and let me go in peace." 
But the jury's eyes "were sot," the verdict rendered, 
and there was no getting away from the decision. 
6 



66 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

I found this race, much more than any former one, 
a bitterly contested fight and no comfortably padded 
Pullman sleeping-car job. Through the out town- 
ships, over rough and muddy roads, in buggy and on 
horseback, day and night, I beat the bush. And all the 
time there rang in my ears the professional office- 
seeker's chant: 

"He greets the women with courtly grace, 

And kisses the baby's dirty face, 
He calls to the fence the farmer at work 

And bores the merchant and bores the clerk. 
The blacksmith while his anvil rings, 

He greets. And this is the song he sings: 
'Howdy, howdy, howdy do? 

How is your wife and how are you? 
Ah! it fits my fist as no other can. 

The horny hand of the workingman'." 

One day when riding along a country road looking 
for voters, I spied a dilapidated old Reuben plowing 
in a field. No sooner had I tied my horse than the in- 
telligent agriculturist left his plow and came over to 
the fence. After shaking his gnarly claw in the hearty 
manner that candidates have, and asking after the 
health of the "old woman," I began my spiel. He 
listened patiently until I got through, and then with 
hums and haws, said : 

"Wall, Cap, I'd like to vote for you ; but the other 
fellow is sort o' kin to me, and I don't like to vote 
agin him." 

Rather taken aback, I queried what relationship he 
claimed with my opponent, when he, with subdued 
pride, drawled out : 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 6/ 

"Wall, I got an idee that he's the father of my oldest 
boy." 

Speechmaking in the country, unless accompanied by 
kegs of beer, was not much attended and of little effect, 
and in town I discovered places where thirsty hordes 
of rolling-mill hands and bibulous swarms from nearby 
cooper shops, were, at the approach of the candidate, 
notified by the little push button of the electric call- 
bell from the ever alert saloon-keeper, to drink at the 
candidate's expense, and where the absent-minded bar- 
keeper forgets to hand out the change for your ten- 
dollar bill. 

Sheriif. — When elected and installed as executive 
officer of the courts I found it necessary that with 
my family I should live in the sheriff's official residence, 
under the same roof with criminals in the jail. Here 
our third child was born and, in commemoration of his 
birthplace, we called him "the jail bird." 

As most of the lawyers at the bar of Vanderburg 
county were old friends, I had easy enough sailing, and 
it was not long before I was on comfortable terms with 
the judges of both courts. Good fellowship generally 
prevailed, and when the proceedings were of more than 
ordinary interest or consequence the sheriff was ad- 
mitted as a participant. 

Obituary Resolutions. — Luke R., a short skate law- 
yer, was noted less for cases in the Vanderburg county 
courts than for his devotion to the classic game of 
poker. Usually "busted," he, like Jack Chinn, was 
always ready to give his note, and like him would say 
the next morning, "Lost a couple of hundred last night, 



68 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

but thank fortune there wasn't more than a dollar 
and a half of it in cash !" 

A good-natured soul was Luke, lanky and inof- 
fensive ; and when he died, Mose, who washes buggies 
at Ford's livery stable on Third street, said there could 
be "nothin' more patheticer than to think of lanky 
Luke among the angels in his stove-pipe hat and long, 
limp linen duster." 

Now lawyers never fail to resolute when one of 
their number dies. So on the day following this, their 
brother's demise, Dan Kumler, who, at the little saloon 
around the corner, had fortified against grief, presided 
in the court room over the meeting of sorrowing bar- 
risters. 

Clay Wilkensen, a burly strawberry blond, had pre- 
pared the resolutions, and when he introduced them he 
said: 

"I do not, if your honor please, propose an eulogistic 
obituary nor a biographical panegyric. It has been my 
aim simply to commemorate our departed brother's 
worth and virtues. Never known to fail a friend, he 
was always ready to take just one more — J. W. M., 
as he so tersely, and yet so eloquently, used to express 
it." 

Just then Colonel Cy Drew, an insurance agent, who, 
from the little saloon around the corner, had slipped 
into the meeting, arose in his place on an unsteady 
pair of hind legs, and asked to be allowed to mingle 
his tears with those of the sorrowing members at the 
bar. 

Riled at the unwarranted intrusion of an unprofes- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 69 

sional, the chair, in milk-souring tones of thunder, de- 
manded : 

"What interest, sir, have you in our defunct brother?" 

"Five thousand on his life, your honor," replied the 
colonel. 

"Have you brought the money with you?" queried 
the chair. 

"No, your honor; but I have brought my tears to 
mingle with the salty brine of your grief," drawled 
the abashed interloper. 

"Then dry your tears and shut up, you sniveling 
hypocrite. The court orders you into the custody of 
the sheriff for contempt !" roared Dan. 

And when the solemnities came to an end, after 
unanimous adoption of Clay's resolutions, the chair 
ordered me, the sheriff, with the prisoner in charge, 
to lead the way to the little place around the corner, 
where, at the expense of the colonel, we drank our de- 
parted friend out of purgatory and into paradise. 

Mob Wanted to Hang a ''Nigger/' — Near the close 
of the two years' term it so happened that I should add 
to my many other experiences a quite serious tussle 
with a mob bent upon hanging a "nigger" who, one 
night at two o'clock, was delivered into my custody by 
the city police. The particulars of the affair I have 
given in another paper, and described how, before day, 
I removed my family uptown to safe quarters, how I 
swore in a posse comitatus and armed them from a 
nearby gun store, and how, to escape the necessity of 
shedding blood, I afterwards spirited the culprit out of 
the county, and thereby ended peaceably what in the 



yO REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

outset had threatened to become a bloody and dis- 
astrous riot. 

Once, a great many years ago, I witnessed a judicial 
hanging. I have ever since avoided matinees of this 
sort. I desire no more such spectacles and am to this 
day thankful that taking life did not fall to my share 
while sheriff of Vanderburg county. 

A Railroad Wreck. — This experience was no more 
attractive than another, one night during the war, 
when I had the misfortune to be in a wreck on the 
Ohio and Mississippi railroad, where we survivors 
picked up arms and legs in our pocket handkerchiefs. 
James B. Elmore, the HUjiiiiiiili |lf|bnrrl of Alamo, has, 
in his handmade poem, "The Monon Wreck," given 
to an admiring public a well-seasoned picture of the 
horrors of such a catastrophe. With breathless inter- 
est shiveringly we read 

But there they lay on the crimson snow, 
Their hearts have ceased to ebb and flow ; 
Quite as cold as a frozen chunk. 
With a lady's heart upon a stump. 

And yonder in the wreck I see 
A man that's pinioned down by the knee, 
And hear him calmly for to say : 
"Cut, oh, cut my leg away !" 

Member of Police Commission. — Under the metro- 
politan police law, enacted in 1883, ^Y appointment of 
Governor Gray, I now became for three years the 
minority member on the metropolitan police board of 
the city of Evansville, and was reappointed in eighty- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 7I 

six for three years more. The statute provided for bi- 
partisan division of the force, and by firmly planting 
myself on the provisions of the law I successfully, but 
not without some wrangle, managed to get and main- 
tain an equal division politically on the force as the 
law contemplated. 

Blaine Campaign. — When in the autumn of 1884 
James G. Blaine, "the plumed knight" of the republi- 
can party, made his memorable swing around the circle, 
he was chaperoned through Indiana by my friend Wil- 
liams of Lafayette. On its arrival, Evansville had 
given the party, which consisted of Mr. Blaine, his 
son Walker, William McKinley, General Harrison, 
Fred Douglas, Bob Pierce, Will Cumback, John M. 
Butler, and its genial leader George B. Williams, to- 
gether with other notabilities of the party, a magnifi- 
cent reception, and enlivened it at night after a dinner 
at my residence with a great torchlight procession. 

The next morning a special train with this party 
on board left for the north, and I, by invitation, joined 
it to enjoy for a day the companionship and interest- 
ing converse of men, two of whom subsequently be- 
came presidents of the United States, a distinction 
which the third one, namely the great commoner Blaine, 
failed to achieve by a few hundred votes only. 

Fred Douglas, the well-known colored man, was on 
this occasion an object of especial interest to me. I 
have not forgotten how, when told that his appearance 
denoted him a well contented and thoroughly happy 
man, the weatherbeaten features of that intellectual 
countenance lighted up as by a ray of sunshine from 



"^2 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

within, and he said to Mr. McKinley and myself, "I 
am thoroughly happy and more than content with my 
lot in life. Did not the people of this enlightened na- 
tion unbind my shackles and make me a man? My 
condition as a slave was such that neither soul nor 
body were my own, but absolutely belonged to another. 
I could set children into the world and rear them only 
to make slaves of them like myself. I should be an 
ingrate to my Maker if I were not both thankful and 
happy, and did not, by my appearance and behavior, 
proclaim it to all the world." 

During the day's progress north through Vincennes, 
Terre Haute and other towns on the way, addresses 
were delivered to large and enthusiastic assemblies by 
Mr. Blaine and other statesmen on board. At night- 
fall we arrived at Lafayette, and some of our party, 
by invitation, repaired to the Williams home, where 
a warm and hearty reception to a hospitable board 
awaited us at the hands of the cultured wife of our 
leader. Being a disciple of the French epicure Brilliat 
Savarin, my friend Williams knew, as did Alexandre 
Dumas aine and the late Sam Ward, how to compose 
a dinner of good things, seductively dainty as well as 
substantially comforting. At her dinner table, tastily 
decorated with the national colors and rare flowers 
from the conservatory, Mrs. Williams presided with 
the grace which is her own, and ably participated in 
the animated converse, humorous sallies and ready 
repartee of her distinguished guests. The wine from 
France, of a mellow old vintage, helped to raise the 
fagged cockles of our hearts, while the gravy with the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 73 

roast was much like the famous sauce which La Costa 
offered to Sir Thomas Dundas at the Duke of York's 
table while he whispered to him with unctious fervor : 
"Avec cette sauce-Id, on pourrait manger son grand- 
pere." 

The next morning Mr. Blaine, much against his 
inclination, was bowled off to Chicago by Uncle Joe 
Cannon and a delegation of Illinois politicians, while 
General Harrison, Mr. McKinley and we other guests 
of the Williams' returned to our homes. 

Nomination for Treasurer of State. — It then came 
to pass that in the summer of eighty-six the republican 
state convention at Indianapolis honored me by putting 
my name on the ticket for treasurer of state. One 
sunny afternoon, while lounging in front of the St. 
George Hotel, my friend Tom Byrnes, returning from 
Indianapolis, where he had just received the dem- 
ocratic nomination for state treasurer, suggested that 
I make an attempt to be equally honored by the re- 
publicans who were to convene in Indianapolis shortly 
thereafter. 

Politics by this time had begun to pall upon me, 
but with a prospect of my name on the state ticket, 
vanity speedily overcame all apathy and determined 
me to adopt friend Tom's suggestion. When I an- 
nounced my name there was less than two weeks' 
time to the day of the convention, but it proved ample 
to secure for me the nomination on the third ballot 
and the defeat of my two competitors, who, as candi- 
dates, had canvassed the state the whole summer long. 
An editorial in one of the republican dailies said : "A 



74 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

few days before the nominating convention, with the 
aid of some of his friends, Captain Lemcke commenced 
a campaign for the nomination such as has never yet 
been excelled for energy and celerity. It was accom- 
plished in an incredibly short time." 

My reputation as a business man and having had ex- 
perience in banking, together with geographical con- 
siderations, combined to smooth and clear the way in 
the contest. When the pack of my Evansville parti- 
zans, enthusiastically led by "Sawney" MacPherson, 
a Scot "wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," under the chief 
command of that forceful and diplomatic friend Gen- 
eral George B. Williams of Lafayette, took the trail, 
the chase was a short one, and the game easily cap- 
tured. 

The ready victory stunned me, and made my speech 
of acceptance sound as idiotic as the libretto of a comic 
opera. Nevertheless this failure at oratory detracted 
nothing from the good feeling which prevailed toward 
the winner, and it stimulated genuine hilarity among 
the crowd of Hoosier statesmen and made me friends. 

The election for state officers in 1886 went republi- 
can by less than three thousand majority, but as a miss 
is as good as a mile, we got there just the same. The 
newly completed statehouse was in the following spring 
taken possession of by the new administrative officers 
under a democratic governor, whose term of office con- 
tinued for two more years. 

I moved my family from Evansville to Indianapolis, 
and the deserted old homestead, formerly the home of 
Governor Conrad Baker, with its shady maples and 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 75 

Stately elms, was abandoned, but not without a twinge 
of mournful regret. 

Legislature Fails to Make Appropriation. — When 
the democrats and republicans composing the legisla- 
ture of 1887 locked horns over the disputed lieutenant 
governorship and failed to make appropriations to 
carry on the financial concerns and public business of 
the state, I found myself as treasurer in an anomalously 
embarrassing position. Fortunately the revenues, in- 
adequate as they were, continued to flow with wonted 
regularity treasuryward. The trouble came with the 
question of how, without specific authority from ap- 
propriation bills, the money should be disbursed. The 
judiciary had to be supported ; the insane, the deaf and 
dumb, the blind, and other beneficiaries of the benevo- 
lent institutions, could not be turned out-of-doors and 
abandoned to their fate; the criminals in the prisons 
should not be set free ; the interest on the public debt 
had to be met; and all other departments of the state 
government must be kept running and effective. But 
the legislature failed absolutely to authorize expendi- 
tures for any of these purposes. 

The finance board, of which the treasurer is ex- 
officio a member, then determined, in the absence of 
specific legislative provisions, to apply to the situation 
continuing appropriation laws embodied in the statutes. 
And where the statutes failed and necessity demanded, 
I personally assumed the risk, drew for needful dis- 
bursements, without sanction of law, upon the general 
fund, and trusted to future legislation to legalize such 



76 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

action; all of which was promptly done by the suc- 
ceeding general assembly of 1889. 

The State a Borrower. — All this time the state treas- 
ury was chronically short, and the days of my first 
term were debt-making days. But with an unimpaired 
credit of the state in Wall street and amongst the sav- 
ings banks of New York and Brooklyn, I seldom failed 
to borrow all the money needed at three, and at no 
time did I pay more than three and a half per cent 
interest. Under this condition of the money market 
it was determined, as previously authorized by a former 
legislature, to refund the school loan of the state then 
bearing six per cent, reduce the interest to three, and 
distribute the three million nine hundred thousand dol- 
lars among the ninety-two counties in severalty. After 
thoroughly, and in person, canvassing all the savings 
institutions and some of the banks and trust companies 
of New York and Brooklyn, while making headquar- 
ters at the banking house of Winslow, Lanier and 
Company, I had no difficulty in promptly placing the 
whole three per cent loan at par, and additionally 
turn into the state treasury a premium amounting in 
the aggregate to eighty thousand dollars. 

Did Not Want a Second Term. — Although I had in 
the summer of eighty-eight made public declaration 
in a republican newspaper that I would not be a candi- 
date that year for reelection, the nomination was again 
given me, and was followed that autumn by reelection 
of the entire republican ticket. The same election 
made my friend General Hovey governor of the state, 
and now when the administration had become republi- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN "jy 

can and the legislature remained democratic, it was to 
be expected that friction frequently should occur be- 
tween the lawmakers and the executive of the state. 

Investigation of the State Treasury. — An investiga- 
tion of the treasury by a committee of the general as- 
sembly (partizan and hostile) then followed, of course. 
When it was found that my books and accounts were 
in proper order and condition, and that all the funds 
as prescribed by law lay snugly stacked up in the vaults 
of the treasury, the committee grudgingly had to re- 
port in accordance with the facts ; but in the language 
of an old English rhyme it can safely be assumed, 
that 

He who complies against his will 
Is of his own opinion still. 

Decline Appointment to the United States Treasury- 
ship. — The month following the end of the second term 
my successor in office asked me to lend a helping hand 
in the work of negotiating a loan to pay interest on 
the state debt. While in New York on this errand 
President Harrison sent for me. Together with Colo- 
nel Ransdell, the then Marshal of the District of Co- 
lumbia, who had brought the summons, and in com- 
pany with ex-Governor Charley Foster of Ohio, who 
was on his way to enter on the vacant secretaryship of 
the treasury, I journeyed to Washington, lamed as I 
was by gout and on crutches. I here received at the 
hands of the President an offer of appointment to the 
vacant post of United States treasurer. Unsolicited 
and entirely unexpected as this flattering proposition 



78 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

came, I was, in my then uncertain state of health, com- 
pelled to ask for time to consider. 

The prospect of life in the beautiful capital of the 
nation ; to be persona grata at court ; chief of a great 
bureau, and custodian of hundreds of millions of the 
country's treasure, were the alluring visions with which 
my friend the President had surprised and dazzled my 
mental optics. The thought of turning my back under 
such flattering conditions upon a distinction coveted by 
men of ability and reputation far beyond my worth 
and deserts, was a sore perplexity and disappointment ; 
but my state of health demanded that I should decline. 
So, after a week's deliberation, I returned to Wash- 
ington to thank the President for the honor of having 
been selected out of a population of seventy-five mil- 
lions as custodian of the nation's treasure, and regret- 
fully tendered him my "Non possumus." 

The newspapers of the day, as was to be expected, 
poked some good-natured fun at me; Frank Leslie, 
among others, published my picture with the humor- 
ously satirical remark : "This is the portrait of a man 
who refused office, and he from Indiana." Our state at 
that time, was, at the hands of the Harrison administra- 
tion, the recipient of a liberal share of political plums, 
not one of which up to then had been declined. 

A voyage over seas, much needed for the restora- 
tion of my health, had for some time been planned by 
the family and found its realization soon thereafter. 

Review. — When I look back over the intermittent 
phases of my political career, I am at a loss to account 
for the many winnings which have fallen to my lot. I 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 79 

was seldom eager enough to systematically set up the 
situation; never dealt in "Blocks of Five;" nor was I 
ever, in order to gain popularity, "a joiner," not even 
of a church choir or confraternity of any sort. While 
always an active republican, I endeavored to give of- 
fense on unreasonable partizan lines to no one, and 
avoided wherever practicable, political quarrels. Free 
of speech, but always courteous to high and low alike, 
I scarcely ever failed for friendly greetings offered to 
receive fair consideration in return; nor did I often 
allow differences growing out of politics to stand in 
the way of good fellowship, and as a result was happy 
in the enjoyment of warm personal friendships in 
both political camps. 

"Be sure you are right and then go ahead," is a 
safe and commendable rule which I have seldom neg- 
lected to follow. An Italian proverb says 

Qui va piano va sano ; 
Qui va sano va lontano. 

and knowing full well that "ignorance and carelessness 
are two pillows of ease" which lull the self-indulgent 
into false security, I never failed to keep watchfully 
on the alert, and thus, in the many trusts imposed, 
both public and private, usually acquitted myself to 
the satisfaction of constituents and supporters. In this 
way I safeguarded my credit, and was able at all times 
to command from friends the ready financial aid so 
helpful to success in business and their willing endorse- 
ment on official and other bonds, which frequently 
amounted to large sums. 



80 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

The perpetrating of this sketch, which has helped 
to while away a few leisure hours, has given me more 
pleasure than I flatter myself its perusal will afford 
the friendly reader. It has been a practicing exercise 
for my prancing Pegasus, and reminds me of the story 
where the boy is engaged in the training of the bull- 
pup on his father. When the old man gets his nose 
between the pup's teeth, the boy cries, "Hold still, dad, 
it's the making of the pup." Like the boy, I, too, am 
doing some training. My Pegasus, lame as he is, has 
fallen upon you, and I also shout, "Hold still and en- 
dure, patient reader!" 

The writer, never idle, always active, in an am- 
bitious chase after the attainable, has climbed many 
steep and rocky cliffs, to be frequently thrown back in 
disappointment. Life with him, however, both proces- 
sional and recessional, has in the main been a bright 
and happy one. In early youth my tastes were literary 
and artistic, and the embers of these tendencies still 
glow with undiminished warmth, but as adverse con- 
ditions were stronger than the inclinations the necessity 
of bread winning made me a Jack of many trades. 

Dame Fortune would often compel me "to go way 
back and sit down," but could not prevent my "bobbing 
up serenely" in some other service or occupation. Rail- 
roading, flatboating, steamboating, merchandizing, 
farming, public warehousing, the timber trade, manu- 
facturing, banking, insurance, hotel keeping, running a 
country store, politics, and war were all, with varying 
success, essayed in their time. School-teaching and 
preaching are about the only callings that I have never 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 8l 

worked at; and the roster of my activities here shows 
a gap which it is now too late to fill. Had a collegiate 
education been mine, I might at one time, in Gibson 
county, have secured a three months country school 
with the munificent pay of forty dollars for the term, 
with hog and hominy among the scholars thrown in. 

During the early days, though the wheels of progress 
w^ere often reversed, the motor of energy with me 
rarely stood still ; I never ate my breakfast in bed, nor 
did I at any time have to go gunning for work. 

I may be permitted to point with pride to the fact 
that I never failed to pay one hundred cents on the dol- 
lar in spite of numerous setbacks, some of which might 
possibly have been avoided if, like the fellow who had 
concocted a new cough medicine, I had "tried it on 
the hired girl first ;" or if I had been as hard to deceive 
as the shrewd Arab, who was captured by the British 
in the Soudan. An English officer with a glass eye, de- 
siring to disabuse the mind of this superstitious native 
prisoner and destroy his blind faith in the fake miracle- 
performing Mahdi, one day took from its socket his 
glass eye, flipped it high in the air, caught it as it came 
down, and putting it back in its place asked, "Can 
your Mahdi do that ?" For a space the man preserved 
his stolidly unimpassioned manner, then, without 
changing a feature, quietly said, "Now the other." 

Confiding friends, who underwrote my paper in 

bank or went on official bonds for me, always came off 

whole; and a suit at law was never brought against 

me except when in Kentucky during the war I was 

7 



82 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

made to pay for two slaves which one of my steam- 
boats had on a stormy night carried off from Union- 
town. 

In jotting down these varied experiences I don't 
mean to strain modesty, nor do I ask the orchestra to 
play slow music as I rehearse. Simplicity and truth 
have been my aim throughout, and whenever I have 
"plowed with borrowed ox" it has been simply to better 
illustrate a point. 

Tis but a just and rational desire 
To light a taper at a neighbor's fire. 

I am aware that "a rolling stone gathers no moss." 
It should, however, not be overlooked that varied em- 
ployment aids versatility. Professor Mommsen, the 
eminent historian, says : "Every man must specialize, 
but must not imprison himself within the narrow con- 
fines of his specialty. It is variety of interests alone 
that can keep the mind well balanced, the judgment 
sane, the viewpoint liberal, and the heart still young." 

My Sassafras Log. — Educational preparation for 
life's struggle fell to my lot only when a child. At 
twelve, when attending the Lutheran parish school of 
St. Catherine in Hamburg, my birthplace, I carried 
off a silver medal for studiousness and diligence. An 
ever lively thirst for knowledge out of books and en- 
lightenment from literature could thenceforth only be 
gratified during leisure moments when sitting astraddle 
of my sassafras log behind the barn on the Posey 
county farm of my uncle, or while burning the mid- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 83 

night oil on winter nights. I can, with Buerger's 
charcoal burner, nevertheless say: 

Und kenn ich auch nichts von lateinischen Brocket!, 
So weiss ich den Hund doch vom Ofen zu locken. 

Theology and Physics. — Immanuel Kant says, 
"Metaphysics is a systematic exposition of those no- 
tions and truths, the knowledge of which is altogether 
independent of experience." Metaphysical specula- 
tions have with me lost their wonted interest. I never 
could distinguish the Athanasian creed of Nicsea from 
the Arian "heresy," and shall ever be unable to sort 
up the Homoiousian from the Homoousian doctrine. 
Forms, creeds and dogma in theology, to me, have al- 
ways been phantoms, elusive and without substance. I 
confess to be destitute of the sixth sense, which Father 
Tom designates as "the sense of the church." 

The capsule containing the story of the creation, 
the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, the 
immaculate conception, and all the innumerable mira- 
cles, so eagerly swallowed by the faithful, will not go 
down with me ; I prefer the conclusions evolved from 
the study of nature's secrets by scientific methods, to 
the dicta of religious soothsayers and dogmatic ex- 
pounders of the unknown and the unknowable. 

Notwithstanding the destructive wars and murder- 
ous persecutions instigated by faith-blinded priests 
and fanatical theologians over forms, creed and 
dogma, which in Christian Europe alone, according 
to Voltaire, sacrificed nine and a half million lives, I 



84 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

do not dispute that every one has an undeniable right 
of way on the road to heaven, and cheerfully grant 
that his right to comforting faith in misty miracles 
and prayer-invoked special providences is unassailable. 
But for this faith the lives of the masses, the poor and 
the afflicted, would be cheerless, gloomy and without 
promise. 

The devil in theology has my greatest admiration; 
without the threat of eternal punishment the control 
of destructive tendencies in the masses would be im- 
possible, and it is only when the aid of his Satanic 
Majesty is invoked by the clergy that pandemonium 
on earth can be averted. 

Endowed by nature with a lively temperament, I 
was never so wild that I did not know "a hawk from 
a handsaw." While seldom running away from fun or 
frolic, I could not often find time to attend conventions 
at the town pump, nor did I ever play tin soldier on 
the governor's staff and wear "gold lace and trim- 
min's." Never as a Sublime Prince or Grand Gyas- 
cutus did I climb to castle halls, wigwams or eyries, 
or allow myself to be put into a coffin, sit on an iron- 
bottomed chair with a blazing lamp underneath, or 
was blindfolded and branded with a chunk of ice. 

I must not, however, deny that once upon a time I 
held membership in the ''Baldheaded" or "Gum Ara- 
bic" club, and for two weeks was its honored presi- 
dent. Without constitution, by-laws, rules or regula- 
tions, this really was not a club, but an aggregation 
only of jolly spirits, gentlemen with tuneful voices 
and a love for fun. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 85 

The Baldheaded Cliih. — Soon after removal from 
Evansville to Indianapolis, and before I knew much of 
the capital city and many of the philosophers in the 
porticos of her baths, Dan Ransdell, now sergeant-at- 
arms of the United States Senate, one evening cap- 
tured and conducted me to Postmaster Ed Thompson's 
residence on Central avenue, where, hobbled and hand- 
cuffed, paregorically speaking, I fell into the arms of 
eighteen or twenty of the clubbists who in the dark sat 
silently around the walls of the drawing-room. 

The unceremonious ceremonies of initiation were 
soon ended, after which a small cocktail flavored 
with pennyroyal (to fool Carrie Nation) was passed 
around. Now, at a sudden burst of light from the 
chandeliers, the mystic forms in the rooms became 
visible, and at the same time the silvery tenor of 
Doctor Woodward rang out in the romantic ditty : 

There is a tavern in our town, 
Where my true lover sets him down, 
And drinks his wine with laughter free; 
And never, never thinks of me, — etc. 

And when the rank and file lustily joined in the 
chorus, the house became filled with tuneful song, 
harmoniously modulated and finely tempered. 

Clarion-voiced William Tarkington, the Brignoli of 
the club, then followed with the well-known Italian 
epic, "A little peach in the orchard grew," which tells 
of the sad fate of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue. 



S6 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Then came from other throats such songs as Tom 
Moore's 



and 



Sweet vale of Avoca! 
How calm could I rest, 

Rich and rare were the gems she wore, 

And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore, 



And so, with more songs, time ambled pleasantly 
along until in the dining-room a "Dutch lunch" 
claimed our attention. After that Captain Harry New, 
the chairman of the Republican national committee at 
Washington, trotted out an Irish intermezzo, which 
was redolent with Hibernian wit and green as the 
shamrock itself. 

Old Burgess Brown, now fairly "warm under the 
collar," in his deepest basso profundo, then intoned 
"Columbia," and when he had recovered his wind, 
recited in the vernacular "'Squire Hawkins' Story," 
which is James Whitcomb Riley's best Hoosier piece 
in rhyme. 

The Squire's account of the scene where the old 
farmer, all wet and dripping, appears among the ex- 
pectant wedding guests, from an unsuccessful chase 
in the rain after his daughter, who has run away with 
her sweetheart John, "the hired man," to escape 
marrying her father's choice, "the old man, with a 
farm or two, and a few gray hairs," caused great mer- 
riment, and when Patience and John suddenly come 
from the kitchen, where clandestinely they have been 
married by the aforesaid Squire, who is their friend. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 87 

and the same Squire describes the avaricious, dis- 
gruntled and sloppy old father as "the wettest man 
you ever saw to have so dry a son-in-law!" the 
hilarity among us knew no bounds. 

Later in the evening Comrade Harry Adams, the 
raconteur of humorous stories and witty comedian, 
aided by Professor David Wallace and Deacon Butler, 
regaled us with a laughable scene from the Greek 
drama of Villikins and his Dinah, while Slawson, on 
a pair of tall hind legs, furnished aerial soda water, 
which he drew fizzing from an imaginary fountain. 
And so, with good fellowship and the muses, time 
went on apace. 

At midnight the one-armed veteran. Col. Dan Rans- 
dell, announced that the time for the annual election of 
a president had now arrived, and thereupon, after 
everybody was seated and the lights turned low, the 
club went into an election. When, amidst a fathomless 
hush, two or three nominations had been announced, 
there came from out of the gloom a bald-headed voice, 
which nominated Captain Lemcke, the hardy navi- 
gator from the banks of the Wabash. Surprised and 
stunned, I, with promptness but modestly, declined the 
honor. This was responded to by a chorus of voices 
with a thundering Indeed! Thereupon opposition to 
the nomination became audible. A first voice objected 
because Lemcke was a dude who wore red socks, 
sported a goatee and didn't pay his washerwoman! 
A second one said that he had been known to rake 
down jack-pots with a four-card flush, and that his 
name was not Lemcke, but Holmes, whose picture is 



CO REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

in the rogues' gallery ; while still another one asserted 
that the nominee had too long followed the plow, when 
he should, like other horned cattle, have been in the 
front of it. 

When at last the debate came to a close I was lying 
stunned under my chair on the floor, in a comatose 
condition, from which a great noise aroused me with 
the boisterous acclaim that the Honorable Mr. Lemcke, 
the noblest Roman of them all, an incomparable states- 
man from the forks of Big creek in Posey county, had 
been elected to the presidency of the club by a unani- 
mous vote. 

After I had been properly rubbed down, drenched 
and blanketed, and my right arm had been jerked out 
of place and in again by congratulatory handshakes, 
the retiring president announced that the new presid- 
ing officer of the club, the Honorable J. Augustus 
Lemcke, would, in two weeks from the day of his elec- 
tion, namely, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of 
the current month (at early candle-light), tender his 
brethren of the club and their friends, at his residence 
on North Pennsylvania street, a jamboree with Dutch- 
lunch attachment; and that then and there another 
annual election for president of the club would take 
place. 

Then, and not until then, did there flare up within 
my dull brain a great big flashlight, by the glare of 
which I discovered that "there was method in their 
madness." 

The foregoing recital may serve as descriptive of 
many subsequent reunions held by this bunch of jolly 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 89 

good fellows. They were always in demand at ban- 
quets, meetings of the Loyal League, inaugurations, 
installations and other festivities, public and private. 

When Professor Bruno Schmitz, of Berlin, Ger- 
many, who designed and constructed the Soldiers' and 
Sailors' Monument in the circle at Indianapolis (the 
noblest work of art in the United States), was my 
guest, the club one night was bidden to General Knef- 
fler's residence. With new songs added and fresh 
stories on tap, the evening bloomed out into one of 
special brilliance. Professor Bruno Schmitz, whom I 
had taken with me, entered heartily into the fun, and 
when in the course of the evening he was called upon 
for a speech he responded readily in German, his 
humorous remarks were full of good hits and very 
bright, but as not one in ten of the club members 
nor many of the visiting company understood the 
language, I was pressed for a translation; but as a 
verbatim rendition from one language into another on 
such an occasion is a job of no little difficulty, I, in a 
spirit of deviltry, substituted all kinds of incongruities, 
humorous quirks and fanciful soarings for the polished 
words of the genial professor, and brought down the 
house with boisterous hilarity, but earned great ap- 
plause for my friend, the great monument builder of 
Germany. 

In my former home on the banks of the Ohio 
I frequently acted as secretary, and now and then 
presided over meetings where matters concerning pub- 
lic interest were discussed and resoluted upon. In my 
"song and dance" clothes, on social occasions, I was 



90 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

looked to as a handy man, who could arrange a ban- 
quet or engineer a hop, where over-ripe maiden ladies 
were not entirely ignored, and where "wall-flowers," 
through polite attention, became participants in the 
fun ; and of late years I have come in demand as pall- 
bearer and advisory councilor to the funeral director. 

One of these funeral directors, a popular under- 
taker, — "I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, 
of most excellent fancy," — while shooting embalming 
fluid into the corpse, used to whistle to himself tunes 
like "Come, rise up, William Riley, and go along with 
me," and other irrelevant airs. Once upon a time he 
was toying with a bald-headed "stiff," whose inani- 
mate cocoanut was so round and smooth that no bump 
could be found upon which to anchor the accustomed 
wig. In spite of all he could do the wig would slide 
to one side and give the dead man an air of being 
drunk and disorderly. When the undertaker appealed 
to the bereaved widow she recommended mucilage, 
and he adopted the suggestion. On returning from 
the drug store with the mucilage, he reentered the 
death chamber and spent another half-hour trying to 
make the wig stick. At last, on coming out very much 
exhausted, he replied to the widow's anxious inquiry 
as to his success, "Holy Moses ! Couldn't do a thing 
with the stickin' stuff." Then throwing out his chest 
until the rhinestone pin on his shirt bosom fairly 
sparkled, and smiling a radiant smile of victory, he 
whispered, "But I found a tack." 

The only excuse I can make for interlarding the 
foregoing story is that it points a very valuable moral, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 9I 

which on more than one occasion has helped me out 
of difficulties as no other ever has — "Where there's a 
will there's a way." Catherine the Second, the Semi- 
ramis of the north, proved it with satisfaction to her- 
self, more than once. 

Mistress Gill is very ill, 

Nothing can improve her 
But to see the Tuileries 

And waddle through the Louvre. 

Europe. — A visit to Europe is the "ultima thule" of 
most Americans. Soon after declining office in Wash- 
ington I sailed with wife and four children from New 
York, and, when we had landed on the other side, pro- 
ceeded directly to Wiesbaden, where, at the celebrated 
waters of its hot springs, I sought relief from rheu- 
matic gout, which had kept me crippled and on 
crutches for a considerable time. Here we became 
stationary until the following spring. That part of 
the summer not consumed by "the cure" was devoted 
to travel in the Swiss mountains and the south of 
Germany. A visit to the imperial city of Berlin was 
also indulged in, where we were entertained by my 
genial friend. Professor Bruno Schmitz, widely known 
as the monument builder par excellence of Germany. 

Citizens of Wiesbaden. — The season's gaiety and 
entertainments soon brought us into social contact 
with some of the citizens and their families residing 
in the attractive city of Wiesbaden, and established 
pleasant relations and friendships which last to this 



92 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

day. The winter following, when not on the shores 
of the Mediterranean or in Spain, we lived in the city 
of Paris ; and the third and last season of our wander- 
ings, when not in Rome, Florence or Naples, our so- 
journ was made in the atmosphere of cultured Geneva, 
the intellectual capital of French Switzerland. The 
children during our stay abroad in Bonn, Wiesbaden 
and Geneva, attended school, and in addition, under 
good masters, studied music and the languages. 

Traveling and Sightseeing. — The protracted stay 
abroad permitted us to see many countries and the 
cities therein. Sightseeing became a regular occupa- 
tion. Attractive landscapes and beautiful views of 
nature gave the greatest pleasure. While we delighted 
in clambering up mountains and elevations, we never 
tired of visiting palaces, parks, monuments and public 
buildings; and, last but not least, picture galleries 
were haunted until we got on familiar terms with all 
the saints in the calendar, and many a Madonna as 
well. To do all this, beside a trip to northern Africa, 
western and middle Europe was traversed from the 
Baltic to the Mediterranean, and from the Bay of Bis- 
cay to the Adriatic; through Spain, France, Savoy, 
Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark and many of the 
thirty and odd kingdoms, principalities and duchies of 
Germany. At the wind-up we crossed the Channel 
into the countries of Milton and Burns, and paid 
homage at the tomb of Shakespeare. Then, when after 
another return to the boiling waters of Wiesbaden, the 
squeaking in my joints had been subdued, we returned 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 93 

in the autumn of '94 to our home in the United States. 

To the tourist who is blessed with ball-bearing 
joints, an active liver and buoyant spirits, nature on 
every hand offers inexhaustible sources of pleasure. 
The brook, as it babbles over pebbly shoals between the 
mossy banks of its cradle, pictures happy and careless 
childhood. 

The rush of the heroic waterfall, leaping boldly from 
ledge to ledge, with its ascending spray and mist 
pierced by rays of the sun into bewildering briUiancy, is 
the sparkling poetry of nature. 

Ripening grain in the field, fringed with the bright 
red of the poppy, as it sways and waves under the 
south breeze, is a visional symphony, and the purple 
hue of the distant hills make it a pastoral poem sweet 
and soothing. 

The giants of the forests pointing impressively to 
heaven inspire the soul with reverence, while the un- 
bounded expanse of the ocean leaves upon the be- 
holder a sense of awe at the limitless majesty of 
nature. 

Above all other glories of this earth, the sights from 
mountain tops cause in the human breast exhilarating 
emotions of exquisite pleasure. The Rockies, the Alps, 
the Apenines and other elevations on the broken and 
upheaved crust of our globe liberally reward the climb- 
ing and clambering traveler with panoramas which 
elevate him above the common concerns of life, and 
soaring on the wings of fancy into the infinite we for- 
get that there is human vermin creeping in cracks and 



94 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

crevices on the lower levels. On crossing the Ap- 
enines long years ago from Florence and Pistoja to 
Bologna, I had on high mountain altitudes my first 
delights. Switzerland, on subsequent visits to Europe, 
offered among its wilderness of grand peaks, on visits 
to elevated points, rare opportunities for soul-stirring 
and entrancing sights of beautiful nature. Vividly do 
I remember a climbing from where the Viege, a wild 
mountain stream, falls into the river Rhone, when our 
way lay along the narrow margin of that roistering and 
foaming little rill up to Zermatt and the Matterhorn. 
The ascent through such a canon or crack in and 
among lofty mountains proves intensely interesting; 
it offers to the sentimental tourist pleasures of no 
common description and fills his bosom with emotions 
of wonder and admiration, and as he scales a point 
here in quest of the elusive Edelweiss, clambers up a 
crag there after a bunch of the luscious Alpenrose, 
or timidly peers into caves and fissures for dear little 
goblins and brownies, fatigue is overcome by enjoy- 
ment which never slacks. 

Professor von Bodenstedt. — Professor von Boden- 
stedt, a man of great renown, during our stay in Wies- 
baden endeared himself to us by many acts of kind- 
ness. As poet and philologist he ranked with the most 
brilliant and intellectual men of Germany, and the re- 
nown of his name extends far beyond the confines of 
his own country. When a young man he lived in 
what is now southern Russia, where, in the city of 
Tiflis, he wrote, under the nom de plume of "Mirza 
Shaffy," poems and aphorisms of wisdom, which for 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 95 

poetic fervor rank with the best of Persian and other 
Oriental writings ; translated into numerous languages, 
they are read and highly prized in many lands. 

Bodenstedt Creates a Language. — During his 
lengthy stay among the Caucasian tribes, with the use 
of the Persian characters and alphabet, he constructed 
and gave the Georgians a written language — a blessing 
which, up to that time, neither they nor their neigh- 
bors the Circassians had possessed. A great linguist, 
he knew half a score of languages, both Oriental and 
Occidental. His mastery, and the versatile handling 
of English, enabled him to make a translation into 
German, highly poetic, of Shakespeare's poems. 

Bodenstedt Discovers a Literary Gold Brick. — 
While at work among the Egyptian mummies and 
Assyrian monuments in the British Museum in Lon- 
don, and at a time when engaged in the study of the 
Elizabethan era, Bodenstedt uncovered an ingeniously 
contrived literary fraud, perpetrated some years 
previously by an adroit swindler of literary reputation 
on the Duke of Devonshire. The credulous Duke, a 
recluse who disdained the counsel and advice of others, 
had been imposed upon by this conscienceless impostor 
named Collier. He had paid fifty thousand pounds 
sterling for imitation and counterfeit manuscripts, 
documents and signatures of and about Queen Eliza- 
beth, Bacon, Shakespeare and contemporaries. This 
startling discovery by a foreign savant at the time 
stirred up the literary world of Great Britain greatly 
and gave Bodenstedt much renown in England. 

As royal councilor at the court of Bavaria under 



96 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Maximilian II, and later on as intendant of the 
Grand Ducal Theater at Weimar, this eminent man's 
capabilities were appropriately honored. 

Of commanding presence, kind and gentle disposi- 
tion, he attracted to himself, not only the mature, but 
the young as well. Our children, on his frequent visits, 
always greeted him with joy. Kate, the eldest, after 
reciting from Whitcomb Riley and Bret Harte, was 
usually rewarded by him with recitations, rendered in 
purest English and with dramatic fervor, from Byron, 
Shakespeare and Tom Moore. 

Mohammedan Morals. — As characteristic of Moham- 
medan customs and morals, Bodenstedt, one day in his 
study, related to Lord Campbell and myself the follow- 
ing character picture of Asiatic customs. He said that 
after taking leave of his friend Schamyl, the then 
heroic leader of the mountain tribes of the Caucasus 
against the Russians, accompanied by a servant, he 
traveled on horseback to the shores of the Black Sea, 
where he intended to take ship for Constantinople. The 
Musselman, a well-to-do landed proprietor, who, while 
they waited for the boat, gave them shelter, took a 
fancy to Bodenstedt's two Arabian steeds and proposed 
to take them off his hands. As the man, however, was 
short of cash, he offered in exchange his two young 
daughters. The girls were respectively eighteen and 
twenty, and both good looking. On declining to make 
this kind of a "swap," my friend had to explain that he 
was only a "dog of a Christian;" did not maintain a 
harem, and would not know what to do with the fair 
charmers. Hereupon Fatima and her sister begged 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 97 

and implored to be taken to Constantinople, where the 
father gave assurance that they would bring the top of 
the market. As Bodenstedt, however, was not inclined 
to become a slave trader, nothing, to the great chagrin 
of the father and daughters, came of the negotiations. 

Monument to Bodenstedt. — When Professor Boden- 
stedt died we buried him near where lies Franz Abt, 
the composer of "When the Swallows Homeward Fly ;" 
and a few friends, including myself, erected to his 
memory, in the leafy Kurpark at Wiesbaden, a monu- 
ment supporting his portrait bust in bronze. 

There hangs in my library at home a large photo- 
graph of him under which, in the last year of his life, 
he wrote for me the following citation from his Mirza 
Shaff y : 

Nur eine Weisheit fiihrt zum Ziele, 
Doch ihrer Spriiche giebt es viele. 

Herr Aufernian. — Next to the friendship of the ven- 
erable author of Mirza Shaffy, I delighted in a close 
intimacy with Herr Auferman, one of the wealthy resi- 
dents of Wiesbaden, who for many years had been a 
prominent business man in New York. His two charm- 
ing daughters are highly cultured ladies, whose bon- 
homie and kind offices my family and I shall never for- 
get. At the wedding of the elder one of the sisters to 
Captain von Bismarck I met a cousin of the erstwhile 
Iron Chancellor, he, the father of the groom, as Royal 
Councilor to the Court of Prussia and Curator of the 
University of Wittenberg, had in charge the home of 
Martin Luther and its belongings. Herr Ernst von 
8 



98 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Bismarck proved to be a lovable old gentleman and 
genial companion, of whom I grew very fond ; and it 
was not long before our acquaintance ripened into a 
warm friendship. In spite of his lifelong service as a 
bureaucrat, I found him to be broad, liberal, and ex- 
ceptionally free from that overbearing and opinionated 
egoism which pervades German officialdom. 

These, my genial Wiesbaden friends, together with 
another of the same sort, an old soldier. His Excel- 
lency, Major-General von Gehbauer, are no more. The 
green sod which serves "as carpet for the infant, and 
blanket for the dead," covers them all. And here 
Riley's words recur to me, 

Hands whose grasp I'd rather hold 
Than their weight in solid gold, 
Slip their grip .... 

Herr E. von Bismarck and a Martin Luther Relic. — 
Herr von Bismarck, when last we parted, gave me a 
Luther memento. It consists of the skeletons of three 
leaves which, over fifty years ago, he took from be- 
tween the lids of the Bible which Martin Luther, dur- 
ing his lifetime, always had close at hand and in daily 
use, and which, on the margins of its pages, is pro- 
fusely annotated by the hand of the great reformer. One 
of the leaves given me is from an oak. The others are, 
respectively, a sprig of arbor vita and a frond of fern. 
These, with my friend's good wishes, I brought to 
America and have kept ever since, preserved in a little 
mahogany case specially made for that purpose. The 
donor, when he handed me the little parcel, said : "I 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 99 

have no doubt but what this waif was by Luther's own 
hands placed where I found it, between the leaves of 
the book which, from the day of his death has, under 
lock and key, been closely guarded and seldom ever 
left its place of safety. And may we not assume, and 
claim credibility for the belief, that this oak leaf grew 
upon the very tree which stood in front of Luther's cell, 
and under which the then monk burned the Pope's Bull 
on December lo, 1520." 

A Swell Wedding. — The wedding of Captain von 
Bismarck and Miss Auferman above referred to, in 
which we took part, a notable affair, was attended by 
guests from far and near, and the festivities continued 
for three days. Champagne, during that time, did not 
cease to flow in steady rills, and the great bowls of 
iced ananas punch were never allowed to go dry. Fat 
oysters from Ostend whetted the appetite ; langoustes 
(the Mediterranean lobster), in their shells of cardinal 
red, ornamented great dishes ; while grouse and part- 
ridges from Siberia, pheasants from Bohemia, and fat 
venison from the neighboring forests in the Taunus, 
served with artichokes and crisp salad romaine, made 
these feasts fit for a king. 

The large conservatories had given up all their or- 
chids ; and roses in great abundance were found every- 
where. Luscious fruits from Italy and huge bunches 
of grapes from Spain garnished the long tables set out 
with a profusion of silver and crystal. During the 
grand ball which wound up the festivities the dancers 
in the graceful minuet were frequently refreshed by 
cooling ices, and the enchanting music of a large or- 



100 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

chestra kept up the fun all night, until, at sunrise, the 
ladies, led by flute and mandolin, trooped off to the lake 
to feed the swans with bonbons and cake. 

The concluding days of this princely festival were 
enlivened by many gay parties on horseback, visiting 
the neighboring Taunus range and some of its ruined 
castles ; while other guests, more soberly inclined, navi- 
gated old Father Rhine as far down as Bingen and 
the National Monument, which overlooks the town of 
Ruedesheim, and penetrated into the cool vaults of 
Schloss Johannisberg, where they drank its far-famed 
wine. 

Geneva and its University. — The last winter of the 
stay in Europe our home was made in Geneva, Switzer- 
land, where, at the university daily, I heard lectures on 
national economy, and became acquainted with several 
professors of the faculty, whose society I enjoyed, and 
from whose learning I profited. Mr. Corning, a rich 
New Yorker, who for thirty years had been a resident 
of Switzerland, became a highly-esteemed friend of the 
family. We valued his society and that of his wife 
greatly. They were hospitable in their fine chateau 
and large park at Morrilion, and he, as amateur musi- 
cian of finished culture and brilliant execution, used to 
seek at the piano our eldest daughter, whose singing 
he greatly admired. 

The Grave of Emma von Bismarck. — With the ad- 
vance of the spring of ninety-four in Geneva I be- 
thought myself of a promise made Herr von Bismarck 
while a guest at the Bismarck-Auferman wedding in 
Wiesbaden. "When on the banks of Lake Leman," the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN lOI 

old father of the bridegroom said to me, "you must, 
in the cemetery at Territtet, look up the grave of my 
daughter, Emma, long since dead, and buried in Swiss 
soil by her friend the Princess Sylvia." 

In order to redeem the promise, my wife and I, one 
bright morning in May, at Geneva quay, took passage 
on the steamer for Montreux, which is situated on the 
north or Swiss bank above Vevay, and a short distance 
below the head of the lake. Under a brilliant sky, 
over the sparkling blue waters, while white-capped 
Mont Blanc smiled through a crisp crystalline atmos- 
phere across the lake out of France, the voyage was a 
highly enjoyable one. 

Territtet, from the landing at Montreux, was 
reached by a short and pleasant walk. We here found 
the ancient little graveyard, covered by a profusion of 
ornamental shrubbery, nestling in a cove on the shores 
of the placid lake. A heavy dew covered the tangle of 
ivy, jasmine and roses which hid monuments and tomb- 
stones, while thickets of rhododendron made our ef- 
forts at investigation laborious and tiresome. After an 
hour of painstaking search we became convinced that 
the grave we were looking for could not be found. As 
a last resort I then climbed to the little church on the 
hillside to look for the sexton. When I found him, the 
white-haired old man informed me that many years ago 
the railroad had cut a corner off the cemetery, which 
had necessitated the transfer of a number of bodies to 
other graves. 

Returning with him we found in another part of the 
enclosure a sunny spot where, against an ancient stone 



102 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

wall, there leaned a number of monuments, urns and 
memorial slabs, one of which bore the following in- 
scription : 

''Ici repose Emma de Bismarck. 
Morte le 12 avril, 1857. 

When, on the return trip in the evening, we repassed 
Mont Blanc, its top now in the sunset glow blushing 
like a rose, nodded to us across the tranquil bosom of 
the placid lake its approval. We passed Lausanne, 
Rolle and Nyon on the north shore, bathed in a purple 
haze, pierced here and there by a starlike speck of 
electric light from shore. And when the pale sickle of 
a new moon became visible floating near the horizon 
directly over the lighthouse at the entrance to the har- 
bor of Geneva, our souls were filled with delight over 
the day and its exquisite beauties. 

My genial old friend Domainerath von Bismarck 
gratefully acknowledged to his dying day this visit 
paid his dead child in the cozy little graveyard on the 
banks of that beautiful lake in French Switzerland. 

Paris. — The winter of ninety-two and three had been 
spent in Paris. This city was no terra incognita to me, 
for I had been there years before. We went to the 
banks of the Seine because all the world goes to Paris. 
Gaiety and glitter attract men and women as the candle 
does the moth. For the idler and the sightseer, if he 
be diligent, there is no end of opportunity, either 
artistic, aesthetic, trivially amusing, or sensually de- 
basing. 

The husband in love with his young bride, who can 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I03 

not imagine that the universe extends beyond the cir- 
cumference of her skirts, is in Paris a rara avis. More 
numerous are the "married men who live Hke bachelors, 
and the bachelors who live like married men." Life 
here, however, is what we make it ; nothing more, noth- 
ing less! The middle class, '7a bourgeoisie" besides 
being thrifty, leads the well-regulated life that people 
do elsewhere. Its members are frugal, so that they 
may have for their daughter a "dot," without which the 
young lady seldom ever attracts a husband. 

Much time in Paris can be spent among the artistic 
wealth of its numerous public and private galleries, at 
antiquarian shops, and at exhibitions and auction sales 
of art collections. 

In Paris. — The musically inclined at the opera can 
find delight in the works of Meyerbeer, Mascagni and 
Verdi, while the masterpieces of Moliere, Corneille, 
Scribe and other dramatists, as interpreted by the 
Coquelins, Bernhardt and Rejane, nightly offer alluring 
entertainment at the theaters. One of the most daring 
but exquisitely artistic plays I remember ever to have 
witnessed (with Rejane in the title role) had a long 
run before full houses the winter we spent in the gay 
city. It was Lysistrata, which is one of Aristophanes' 
best known comedies ; but it would require to be much 
expurgated before a manager in New York or Boston 
could have the hardihood to put the likes on a stage in 
this country. 

The galleries, public and private, filled with creations 
in marble by disciples of Praxiteles and the Greek mas- 
ters ; the great collections of canvases signed by such 



104 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

names as Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Murillo, Corot, 
Meissonier, Detaille and innumerable other wizards 
of the brush, delight the lover of art, while the mu- 
seums filled with the goldsmiths' handiwork, the gems, 
the ivory carvings, and the curios and bric-a-brac, an- 
cient and modern, from Assyria down to the present 
day, furnish inexhaustible entertainment to the appre- 
ciative visitor of this great art center. 

In the environs of the city interest, with him who is 
appreciative, need never flag. From royal St. Germain, 
the Palace of Versailles with its park and numerous 
fountains, all the way to the forest of Fontainebleau, 
Paris is surrounded by localities teeming with reminis- 
cences of a romantic past, and the history of genera- 
tions that have passed has left its indelible footprints 
everywhere. 

In a locality which was once the great forest of 
Montmorency I was shown the place where Robes- 
pierre, at the height of "the Terror," in the pale un- 
certain light, under the flitting mist of early mornings 
in June, prepared himself daily, by filling his soul to 
the full with "the infinite sweetness of nature's magic 
charms," to go forth thence to the diurnal slaughter 
of his fellow men under the guillotine. 

Much interest attaches to the last resting places of 
those dead in whose life-work we feel concerned. Many 
of the tombs in and around Paris are sentimentally fas- 
cinating. Follow me from Napoleon's magnificent 
sarcophagus in the Invalides past Marie Bashkirtseff's 
tomb near the Trocadero, then let us pass through the 
venerable cemetery of Pere la Chaise, up to that un- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN IO5 

pretentious grave on the heights of Montmartre of the 
great poet and philosopher Heinrich Heine, and I will 
read you his last words as engraven on his tomb. 

Keine Messe wird man singen, 
Keinen Kadosch wird man sagen, 

Nichts gesagt und nichts gesungen 
Wird an meinem Sterbetage. 

Carnival Ball of the Artists. — I frequently loafed 
with artists in their studios and at the various art 
schools, and it was in February, 1893, at the Atelier 
Laloux, that a student friend procured for me an invi- 
tation to the artists' carnival fancy-dress ball, the most 
phenomenal which ever happened in "Gay Paree." The 
members of ''les quatres arts," sculptors, painters, ar- 
chitects, engravers and their guests, together number- 
ing nearly four thousand men and women, found ample 
room for their season of fun and frolic in the immense 
hall of the Moulin Rouge, where, with good-natured 
hilarity, the best of order and decorum was maintained. 
When I use the word decorum it is not to be taken in 
the sense of a religious class-meeting, but should be 
qualified by the prefix "artistic." Nature here, in a 
number of cases, was unadorned; but unadorned na- 
ture, blended with the refinement of the artistic, ap- 
peared as we see it reflected on the canvas of a Beau- 
gereau or Lefebre, very lovely and charmingly attract- 
ive. The scant attire of the ladies gave me a cold, but 
I would not have been away if it had given me pneu- 
monia. 

One tableau only shall be dwelt upon and described. 



I06 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

It was the most ravishingly beautiful among a great 
number which, at two o'clock in the morning, blazed 
forth in a brilliant procession parading the immense 
hall. The pageant was led by M. Gilliaume, a cele- 
brated Parisian journalist, who, tall and stately, with 
beard black as the wing of a raven, represented an 
Assyrian magistrate. In this procession, under a 
canopy ablaze with colored fabrics of Oriental splendor, 
on a gorgeous satin couch, carried by Ethiopians who 
were black as polished ebony, reclined, entirely nude, 
one of the most perfectly shaped female models of the 
Parisian art studios. She was a blond Venus of re- 
splendent charms — such a one as only the reverie of a 
Delacroix or a Hans Marquart, in their happiest mo- 
ments of inspiration, could have conceived or their 
brush created. The delicately undulating lines and 
soft flesh tints of the body were relieved, or accentuated 
rather, by a net of silken cords which was lightly 
spread over her lower limbs, and the meshes of which, 
two inches square, created a dainty contrast with the 
rosy cuticle beneath. The only ornament she wore was 
a strand of large lustrous pearls, which encircled her 
supple neck. "Modesty," said M. Jules Roque, in the 
Courrier Francaise the next morning, "modesty, when 
the springtime of youth has sown red roses over the 
white flesh of nude female loveliness, should not hide 
the human form divine under the toggery of envious 
prudery." To properly understand the composition of 
this Olympian feast it must be remembered that its at- 
tractions and allurements were provided for the enter- 
tainment of artists solely, and that the public was 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN IO7 

Strictly excluded from participation, as there were no 
admissions sold. 

The variety of ingenious disguises at the Moulin 
Rouge that memorable night was endless. The nude- 
ness of the affair, tempered as it was by the artistic, 
served to add to its attractiveness. Decollete did not 
become offensive, nor did it at any time degenerate into 
familiarity or unseemliness. 

The next morning at the American consulate, where 
I described to my friend General Adam King and a 
number of other gentlemen the feast of the previous 
night, a newspaper man in sore disappointment said, 
'T have for eighteen long years lived in Paris, repre- 
senting American newspapers, and ought to be posted ; 
but here comes 'a raw hand from the Wabash,' and 
scoops me out of the biggest and the liveliest satur- 
nalia that ever happened." 

The carnival ends on Shrove Tuesday at midnight. 
Up to that time its merry-makings are indulged in by 
the people of all the Catholic countries of southern 
Europe. Its origin undoubtedly is to be sought for in 
the days of paganism, antedating the Christian era. 
The church and many of the Popes encouraged, and 
the Italian cities never failed to celebrate its follies. 
When, during the carnival week of sixty-seven, I vis- 
ited Rome for the first time, the flowers, the novelty of 
confetti-throwing, and the races of the riderless horses 
in the Corso, gave me much pleasure. 

It is true that morals among some people in Paris 
are held in small esteem. It must not be forgotten, 
however, that this city is the metropole where, regard- 



I08 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

less of form or favor, tout le monde meets in quest of 
pleasure and amusement. The temperament of the 
Gaul is lively in the extreme and readily lends itself to 
light-hearted pastimes and practices, in which teachings 
of the Christian Endeavorers may at times be over- 
looked, and the practices of an austere monastic life is 
ignored. But he who goes through life with his eyes 
open has occasion frequently to observe that the deacon 
himself who, amidst his Sunday-school surroundings, 
obeys the biblical injunction strictly, and scorns to look 
upon "the wine that is red," when away from home, 
while floating in the, to him, novel atmosphere of the 
large city, occasionally succumbs to the tempting high- 
ball or sparkling fizz, which is not red, and under its ex- 
hilarating effect may also be tempted at midnight to 
look in upon Mabille or the Casino de Paris to take a 
glimpse at the much-vaunted cancan and wild abandon 
of its capering dancers. "When in Rome do as the 
Romans do," is an adage which finds frequent applica- 
tion in practice ; to avoid inoculation from foreign 
heterodox ways and practices, we should not go to 
Paris, but stay under the protection of our own village 
pastor. 

Louis Napoleon. — At court, Eugenie, the third Na- 
poleon's beautiful empress, in her day maintained de- 
cent conditions. It is related of her that when, before 
her marriage, Louis approached her with immoral pro- 
posals she repulsed him with the indignant reply, 
"Through the church only lies the road to my bed 
chamber, sire." 

The emperor, in his youth a roue, was in later years 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN IO9 

much restrained by his Spanish wife. He, nevertheless, 
took a lively interest in the stray bits of "scan, mag." 
now and then circulating about the court, and to which 
he would seldom fail to add a witty sarcasm, as the fol- 
lowing anecdote proves. When, one day in his pres- 
ence, the character of a lady attached to the court was 
being dissected by the gossips, and some one in her de- 
fense asserted that she had never been guilty of a 
''faux pas" (false step), Louis smiled and maliciously 
whispered, ''Vraiment, il n'y a pas de faux pas dans sa 
vie, il n'y a qu'iin faux papa, le pere de ses enfants." 
This dainty play upon words, the deacon, I fear, will 
order placed on the Index Expurgatorius. 

Man-traps. — Paris, with its many ingeniously dis- 
guised and secretly hidden man-traps, is not a good 
place for the inexperienced young man from the coun- 
try. A cynical philosopher says that here "the deepest 
students in the botany of women have been able to de- 
scribe so few kinds that no man walking through the 
perfumed, enchanted wood knows at what moment he 
may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly 
variety." Mais, que voules-vousf Is it not said of the 
venerable boys of old that, 

David and Solomon led curious lives, 
They made themselves familiar with other men's wives ; 
But when they grew old their conscience got qualms, 
So Solomon made Proverbs and David wrote Psalms. 

Eh hien! Thus the show of life goes on with high and 
low alike. 

The microbe of curiosity which fills up much space 



no REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

in some people's lives, has never bothered me greatly. 
To see kings and queens and be received at court is 
the biggest thing in Hf e ; at least it is so considered by 
most American women. The only attempt I ever made 
to get near the anointed of the lord ended in a mis- 
carriage. 

An Improvised SzmUowtail. — It was long years ago 
at the Vatican in Rome, when Pope Pius IX was en- 
gaged one morning in the adoration of the arm of St. 
Francis Xavier, a relic venerated by the church. I pre- 
sented my special card of admission in due form, but 
contrary to the rules of etiquette, attempted to pass the 
portals of the Sistine Chapel in an ordinary black frock 
coat, the tails of which had been pinned back by the 
fachino of the hotel to make it do duty in place of the 
prescribed conventional swallowtail, which I did not 
possess. But it was no go. No sooner, clad in this im- 
provised swallowtail, had I set my foot across the 
threshold, than the tall and powerful Swiss guard in 
zebra stripes, detecting the ruse, gripped my collar and 
promptly set me down outside, where, much humbled, 
I unpinned the tails of my coat, and against an adverse 
wind sadly tacked my way back to the hotel. 

King Louis of Bavaria. — In the spring of 1867, while 
traveling in Italy in company with two young Ameri- 
can friends from the state of Maine, I met one evening 
at the Cercle St. Carlos in Naples, Louis I, ex-king of 
Bavaria, who had abdicated his throne. Unattended 
as he was, without special introduction from any one, 
he and I fell into conversation and sat together for an 
hour while dancing progressed in the adjoining apart- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN III 

ments. The old gentleman was quite genial and talk- 
ative on subjects of art, and showed much interest in 
the affairs of our country. Louis, while king, had dis- 
tinguished himself as a promoter of the fine arts, but 
had fallen short in political capacity. At one time the 
beautiful but notorious adventuress Lola Montez en- 
meshed him with intrigues and almost succeeded in em- 
broiling Bavaria and Wiirtemberg in a war with each 
other. 

Unpretentious Royalty. — There lives in Munich, the 
attractive capital of Bavaria and residence of the royal 
house of that kingdom, a family of gifted musicians ; 
they are citizens in ordinary circumstances, without 
wealth or title of nobility, who frequently of evenings 
receive visits from Liutpold, the prince regent, and 
other members of the royal family. These august indi- 
viduals on such occasions come on foot, unannounced 
and unaccompanied by outriders or court-flunkies ; they 
clamber up three pairs of stairs to the unpretentious 
apartment of the family, solely to spend a cozy evening 
and have a good time with music, for which this ruler 
of men has much fondness and of which he is no mean 
performer himself. 

My authority for the foregoing is Counselor Max 
Bernstein, in whose society at Geneva in Switzerland 
several summers ago I spent a number of days pleas- 
antly entertained. The doctor, a counselor at law, an 
author and an eminent musical and dramatic critic, is 
well known in art circles of the city of Munich ; he is a 
near relative of this signally-favored family, and fre- 



112 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

quently participates in their highly enjoyable reunions 
with royalty. 

Royalty in social relations with its subjects uniformly 
maintains haughty exclusiveness. From this practice 
most members of the house of Wittelsbach, the reign- 
ing family in Bavaria, make an admirable exception. 
It is well known all over Europe that one of the princes 
of this dynasty, an able and a learned man, is regularly 
engaged in the practice of medicine ; he treats the eyes 
and other organs of such as are too poor to pay, and 
is highly esteemed in the profession for profound learn- 
ing and great skill. 

Voltaire. — Doctor Bernstein and I, during the stay in 
Geneva, together made a visit to Ferney, the chateau 
and park of Voltaire. This estate, for years owned 
and occupied by the great philosopher, is situated at a 
junction of the borders of Switzerland, France and the 
then independent republic of Geneva. Here the wily 
old fox, by skipping over the line from one country into 
the other, managed to enjoy immunity from persecution 
by his clerical enemies, who were numerous and en- 
venomed. 

Under the umbrageous trees in the park, looking out 
on a charming landscape, with the blue waters of Lake 
Leman in the distance, much of the day was spent in 
animated converse relating to Voltaire, the champion 
of religious liberty and forerunner of the French Revo- 
lution. My well-informed companion, a man of erudi- 
tion and a poetic turn of mind, knew much that was in- 
teresting about Germany's literary, artistic and dra- 
matic people of to-day, some of whom were old friends. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN II3 

With Lenbach, the celebrated Munich artist, who 
painted such powerful portraits of Bismarck, "The Man 
of Blood and Iron," Bernstein was on intimate terms, 
and related of him many anecdotes, humorous and 
otherwise. 

When, at the close of that day, we returned to 
Geneva, my pleasant companion made the road for me 
seem far too short and the trip only too speedily ended. 

Prince Bismarck. — I recall with much pleasure how 
once, at Bad Kissingen, I had a few words of pleasant 
conversation with the great statesman and regenerator 
of Germany, Prince Bismarck. The party from Frank- 
fort, which by appointment I had joined, made the trip 
by rail to Kissingen, and there, in 1892, we paid Bis- 
marck a visit. We found the old Titan much shorn of 
his rugged strength, but genial and communicative. 
He was accompanied by the princess, his wife, his alter 
ego, Dr. Schweninger, and his constant companions, 
the two big Danish dogs. 

During four visits to Europe we crossed the paths of 
royalty frequently. Among the majesties I remember 
to have seen are : two Popes, Pius IX and his successor 
Leo; Victor Emanuel, the grandfather of the present 
king, who, with the aid of Garibaldi, created a United 
Italy; his son Humbert, who succeeded him on the 
throne, and that monarch's beautiful queen, Margua- 
rita, the present dowager; Dom Pedro, emperor of 
Brazil; the former Shah of Persia; the present Em- 
peror of Germany and his empress; the late Queen 
Victoria and her daughter Beatrice ; the King of Den- 
9 



114 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

mark, and King Edward of Great Britain, together 
with Alexandra, his statuesque queen. 

But what is there so majestic about the royalties of 
this world? Take them in their pajamas, strip them 
of ermine and purple, and what are they but men and 
women ? Some of them sifted a little finer, perhaps, yet 
of the earth earthy, as other clay-baked humanity. 

Gild the farthing if you will, 
But it is a farthing still. 

Charles Fourier — Schopenhauer. — Charles Fourier's 
disparaging diagnosis of man's condition is that, "The 
human race has no science of disease nor of its cure, of 
crime nor of its reform, of morals nor its source, of 
life nor its object. It orgaaiizes fable-telling into 
bishoprics and archbishoprics, and promotes the teach- 
ers of myths to crowns and salaries, because they feed 
it taffy. A few philosophers have learned a little, but 
these the infantile mind hates. Hence, mankind is still 
in its infancy." 

Accepting, as I do, this view of the status of the race 
to be in accordance with the facts, man should be happy 
as only infants can be, and Sir Lucius O'Trigger per- 
petrates but an Irish bull when he exclaims, "None but 
the discontented are truly happy !" Happiness, Scho- 
penhauer holds, is "a negative condition, a state of ex- 
istence free from pain and trouble." This condition 
very few, however, can boast of enjoying. Physical 
pain, caused by our own shortcomings and transgres- 
sions, heredity, and other causes, invades the life of 
nearly every one, and trouble mentally, as the inevitable 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN II 5 

result and outcome, is ever present. The leaden weight 
of boredom with the sluggish majority is no doubt the 
worst enemy to happiness and a direct source of much 
suffering. In order to banish it, this pessimistic phi- 
losopher says, "A man will have recourse to dissipation, 
society, extravagance, gaming, drinking and the like." 
Boredom and Cheerfulness. — To escape this deplor- 
able condition I have steadily endeavored and sel- 
dom failed to keep the mind active and wholesomely 
employed, and have thereby secured that degree of 
cheerfulness so essential to contentment. He who will 
follow my precept may, in the pursuit of happiness, 
with the poet say : 

He owns the bird songs of the hills, 
The laughter of the April rills ; 
And his are all the diamonds set 
In morning's dewy coronet, 
And his the dusk's first minted stars 
That twinkle through the pasture bars, 
And litter all the skies at night 
With glittering scraps of silver light ; 
The rainbow's bar from rim to rim. 
In beaten gold belongs to him. 

When Death Comes to Young Manhood. — I have 
now arrived at a time in life when "the heyday in the 
blood is tame, it's humble and waits upon the judg- 
ment." In contemplating the past, I can look back upon 
quite a checkered career of ups and downs ; of adversity 
and prosperity ; of pleasure and pain, and of sunshine 
and sorrow. The darkest of all shadows which can fall 



Il6 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

across the path of man is death, and when it comes to 
blossoming youth, hale and hearty, the gloom is doubly 
deep. 

At sunrise, on the morning of Thursday, June i6, 
1898, the family in deep sorrow stood at the bedside of 
our dead son George, who on the threshold of manhood 
had just breathed his last. The youthful buoyancy 
and genial cheerfulness of the handsome young fellow 
had endeared him to many friends, and the untimely 
loss of one so much beloved cast a gloom upon all who 
knew him. I can never forget the bright face, as with 
closed eyes it lay turned up to the morning light, and 
the rosemary of remembrance often in dreams shows 
me his sunny smile through the green sod of Oak Hill, 
where he rests. 

The snow was falling in big flakes ; there was light 
and warmth within, when, on the first Christmas eve 
after his death, the clock struck the hour of midnight. 
His mother and I were alone, and our sad thoughts 
had strayed out to that solitary grave in the distant 
cemetery. On looking up at his picture, hanging over 
the mantel, garlanded with green boughs, the poor 
mother's aching heart burst forth in a sob ; and bathed 
in tears she wailed in a broken voice, "The snow is fall- 
ing on George's grave to-night. My boy! Oh, my 
boy!" 

Chords that vibrate keenest pleasure 
Thrill the deepest note of woe. 

The next morning bright skies dispelled the gloom of 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN II7 

the previous night, and the thought voiced itself in our 
yearning souls, 

Is there beyond the silent night an endless day? 
Is death the door that leads to light ? We can not say. 
The tongueless secret, locked in fate, we do not know,— 
We hope and wait. 



SKETCHES 

WILDCAT STEAMBOATING ON THE WA- 
BASH AND ITS TRIBUTARIES 

My first essay at steamboating took place many years 
ago. This episode of my early life was not a brilliant 
one, but has proven an interesting reminiscence, as I 
shall endeavor to relate. 

The single engine, side-wheel steamer, "H. M. Sum- 
mers," as she lay moored at the Evansville wharf, had 
very much more the appearance of a floating sawmill 
than a steamboat; she was slow and unwieldy as a 
\ turtle, was unreliable and balky as a mule, and when 
: moving would wheeze and clatter along as a street 
car does with a flat wheel. Owned by a "jackleg" 
carpenter, she was commanded by him, and he in turn 
was bossed by his wife, a veritable little vixen, with 
features which bore the happy expression of an ac- 
ademic angleworm. She made her home "on board," 
to manage the husband and the finances of the boat 
in her own sweet way, and 

He, by geometric scale. 
Could take the size of pots of ale, 
Resolve by signs and tangents straight, 
If bread and butter wanted weight. 

The boat was loading with salt for the east fork 
of White river and needed a clerk, or purser, and when 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN II9 

I presented myself I was shipped up at the munificent 
salary of $30 per month, with the understanding that 
I stand both watches, which meant very little or no 
sleep. 

From Evansville to the mouth of the White river 
of Indiana it is fifty-five miles down the Ohio and 
eighty miles up the Wabash. From there it is but a 
short distance up White river to where the east fork 
unites with the west fork. On entering the east fork 
it was found that the water had begun to fall, and 
when we had proceeded as far up as "Porter's Rock," 
the boat grounded and stuck fast. All efforts to get 
her off, or go farther, failed for want of water to float 
her. When she struck we were still some twenty-five 
miles below our destination, and sorely puzzled as how 
to dispose of the cargo. The river was on a rapid de- 
cline, and to protect the cargo and save the heavily 
laden boat from breaking in two, there was but one 
thing to do, — lighten the vessel by discharging her 
freight in the woods where she lay, and get out of the 
river as fast as possible. The banks here are high 
and were deep in mud, the deck crew small and lazy, 
and no help was procurable in this then thinly settled 
part of the country. So, fully appreciative of the pre- 
dicament and its consequences, everybody on board, 
from the captain and the clerk to the knife shiner and 
the chambermaid, under the ringmastership of the little 
old lady with the liverpad, fell to "parbuckling" heavy 
salt barrels up the steep, slippery river bank. After 
two days and nights of unremitting toil the cargo 
was at last discharged and the ship set afloat. Then 



120 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

we "stood not upon the order of our going," but 
went ! Arrived at Evansville on the return, I realized 
that there was no money wherewith to pay the wages 
of the crew, the old woman was obdurate and refused 
to go down into her stocking or give up the sheckles 
hid away in the mattress of her bed, and so the boat 
went into the clutches of the United States marshal 
and was sold for debt. Thus ended my first essay at 
seamanship in Indiana waters. 

Without money but with hope, which ''springs eter- 
nal in the human breast," to get the few dollars due 
me from the boat, and while debating whether I should 
henceforth devote myself to divinity, law or physics, 
I agreed with the captain to make an attempt at dis- 
posing of that lonesome salt pile in the far-off wilds 
of Pike county which we had left there unprotected 
from the depredations of rabid razorback rooters and 
other animals. The captain then provided me with 
a broken-down old mousseline de laine mare and 

When the sun had long since in the lap 
Of Thetis taken out his nap. 
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn 
From black to red began to turn, 

I got, without much ado, to horse and bumptiously 
sallied forth through the knee-deep mud of the partly 
frozen roads on an overland journey of many miles. 
Everybody I went to see in the villages and at the cross- 
roads of that neighborhood declined to buy salt; this 
elsewhere valuable commodity in that neck of the 
woods, at the time, seemed to be a drug on the market 
and not wanted. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 121 

In my wanderings over strange territory and through 
dense forests one dark night, following the blazings 
of a new cut road, I lost my way. It was a lonely 
ride and a drowsy one; it lacked variety and enter- 
tainment from the summer-night songs of the melodi- 
ous frog or the merry chirp of the lively katydid. 
Their voices long ago had been stilled by the deaden- 
ing frosts of winter, and not even the ghostly hootings 
of an owl stirred the oppressive hush of the night. 

Nothing denser in the way of darkness had occurred 
to me up to that time, except the prospect of making 
sale of the salt pile slumbering innocently on the banks 
of the river. About midnight, lost, bewildered, worn 
out with fatigue and stupid from want of rest, I fell 
asleep in the saddle ; when, suddenly awakened, I found 
myself lying in the mud of the road and the horse 
within earshot browsing in the woods. Drowsy as I 
was, I felt little inclination to remount, but soon the 
penetrating wet drove me on hands and knees in 
search of the old mare, which answered in the dark 
with a nicker, and when we found our way back into 
the road, with stiff knees, I once more climbed to my 
seat in the saddle. From this time on I gave her the 
reins and let her have her head, and in less than half 
an hour she brought me up to the bars of a small clear- 
ing. The dog fiercely "bayed" not "deep-mouth'd wel- 
come," but under like circumstances " 'tis sweet" to 
hear even a stump-tailed cur yelp, snarl and whet his 
teeth, particularly when his bark brings the bare- 
legged squatter, as it did, to the door of the cabin with 
a sleepy-headed but cordial invitation to the hospitality 



122 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

of his log hut, which, with a heart full of thankfulness, 
I glorified into an Oriental palace out of the "Arabian 
Nights" tales. Tying the mare up to a sapling (for 
there was no stable), I without reserve threw myself 
into the arms of Morpheus, whose soothing embrace I 
stood sorely in need of, as I had not closed an eye for 
two nights previously. When daylight appeared I 
found a sore-eyed, gawky girl of twelve cooking break- 
fast at a log fire. I washed outdoors after breaking 
the ice at the horse trough, and as I feared infection 
from the grimy family towel I dried myself on my gar- 
ments and combed my hair with my fingers. The 
squalor and untidiness of the cabin was appalling, and 
it drove my wolfish appetite clean off of the premises. 
I saw potatoes in their jackets the size of marbles, 
which had been cooked the evening before, frozen into 
a hard lump with the water in which they were cooked, 
thawed by the big fire and served for breakfast. 
Chunks and remnants of corn bread were fumbled over 
by unwashed hands on a dirty table, and the molasses 
jug, like Uncle Remus's tar baby, stuck wherever it 
was touched. I could with difficulty and in spite of 
an empty stomach worry down a morsel or two only, 
and had to decline altogether the proffered cup of 
lobelia tea masquerading as coffee, which latter luxury 
the family had not the wherewith to buy. When I left 
I could not, in spite of their poverty, prevail upon 
these people to take pay for the entertainment they had 
so opportunely given me, and I left them with their 
squalor in the proud consciousness of hospitality gen- 
erously dispensed without money and without price. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I23 

At the village of Winslow, where the following night 
I found "entertainment for man and beast," which in 
this case meant a clean and a warm bed and good 
fare, and included fresh biscuits and hot coffee, I 
breakfasted before day by candle-light. The wax- 
bottom pie, however, was frozen so hard that the 
large gravel-like seeds of the wild fox grapes, of which 
the pie was made, and its other frozen contents almost 
formed an ice gorge as they slid down the gullet into 
my combustion chamber. Whenever on that day's 
travel the Rozinante swung into her favorite jolty trot 
my sensations were like those that I fancy disturbed 
Mark Twain's ''jumping frog of Calaveras county," 
after the fellow had filled him up with shot ; the weight 
kept him from jumping and held him close to earth 
and me glued to the saddle. 

The salt pile, as far as I know, was never sold, and 
if, in the course of time, it has not melted away or been 
licked up by the companions of Ulysses, which Circe 
turned into swine, must repose on the banks of the east 
fork of White river yet. 

Old Clawhammer, the captain of the ''Summers," 
after the debacle, returned to the handsaw and the 
hatchet, and the commodore, his wife, took to doing up 
her hair in "follow me lads" curls, and became a spiritu- 
alist medium and successful fortune-teller. The steam- 
boat "Summers," after being sold by the United States 
marshal, fell into the hands of two mudsocks named 
Johnson, and when in the course of time she met her 
fate it was in the shallow waters on "The Chain" in the 



124 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

lower Ohio. The brother who commanded her sent 
the other brother the following message : 

"Dear Brother Philo — The *H. M. Summers' am no 
more. She sunk in four feet and a half of water. No 
lives lost, thank God ! Your brother, Wash." 

The sentimental and at that time inexperienced pur- 
ser of the ci-devant "Summers," who on that trip was 
without a purse to hold, continued in the profession 
until during the prosperous days of steamboating on 
the Mississippi and Ohio. In his day he successfully 
navigated and commanded some of the floating palaces 
of his time, until eventually he got on to the toboggan 
slide and landed in state politics and spinning yarns 
of the days of the long ago. 



FLATBOATINGDOWN THE MISSISSIPPI 

The primitive craft known to the people of this west- 
ern country as a flatboat, is nothing more than a rough, 
water-tight box; it is four to five times the length of 
its width and is covered by a roof to keep out the rain. 
Its progress is determined by neither sails nor steam 
engine, and the long oars, called sweeps, are not so 
much for propulsion as to keep the craft in the current 
of the stream, upon which the overgrown tub depends 
for headway. 

As an inexpensive means of freighting the more 
bulky products from the upper country to market in 
New Orleans and along the sugar coast of Louisiana, 
the flatboat was in its day much resorted to, and at 
all seasons of the year the Mississippi and its tribu- 
taries bore great numbers of them, laden with timber, 
hay, whisky, flour, pork and corn, to plantations on the 
lower Mississippi and the Crescent City. 

Many years ago, when time was young and the 
heavens hung full of promises, I became owner and 
master of one of these marine makeshifts. The sum- 
mer months had been spent "getting out" stave timber. 
This was in the "black bottoms" of the Ohio opposite 
Paducah, Kentucky. Here, in the dense forests of 
"Egypt," with the help of a gang of woodmen, I felled 
big trees, out of which we hewed into shape gunwales 



126 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

and timbers for a boat to be loaded with staves for ex- 
port to Italy. The lumber for planking the boat came 
from a nearby sawmill, and the oakum and pitch I pro- 
cured "up the river." 

This Robinson Crusoe way of shipbuilding proved a 
tedious job, but when finally launched the boat floated 
the waves as proudly as did Lohengrin's swan. After 
one of the French forts nearby, a line of which in the 
early days had extended from Canada to Louisiana, I 
named her the "Massac;" but unfortunately neglected 
to break the conventional bottle of wine over her nose 
at the launching. This slight she later on resented, 
carrying spite so far once upon a time as to run her 
head, on a dark night, against a big raft of Yazoo river 
logs, and thereby nearly ending her existence and the 
life of her captain and the crew as well. 

By the middle of November I had the boat ready; 
had shipped up a pilot and crew ; and after taking on 
board a cargo of wine cask staves, which load was to 
lay the foundation for me of great wealth, we awaited 
at the wharf at Metropolis, Illinois, forty miles above 
the mouth of the Ohio, favorable weather for our de- 
parture south. 

A high wind which, the first evening, had been blow- 
ing from the south, whipped around to the northwest, 
and soon after sunset freshened into a fierce gale. With 
insufficient stakes on shore for the lines it became dif- 
ficult to hold the boat to her moorings, and at the same 
time, on a shelving beach, keep her out of the breakers. 
Her seams soon began to spring leaks ; and when at 
midnight the gale rose to a sixty-mile hurricane, the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I27 

pumps began to have a tight race with the inflowing 
water. 

Visions of wealth and trips to sunny Italy all van- 
ished during the anxious and toilsome hours of that 
hard, tempestuous night. Toward the morning hours 
the cold became so intense that the water-soaked clothes 
froze to our backs, and icicles hung in the beards of 
the crew. My "rich, deep, subsoil" voice of command 
was completely drowned by the howling of the wind 
and the lashings of the surf; but any voice, that of a 
foghorn even, would have been useless. Toward morn- 
ing the men, with stiff fingers and frostbitten toes, gave 
out, and one by one sneaked off in search of warmth 
and shelter. Left all alone, I, too, was ready to give 
up, but managed to hold on till daylight, and when in 
the gray of dawn I spied on shore a thin column of 
smoke curling upward I made my way toward that 
smoking chimney as fast as frozen limbs and stiff, icy 
clothes would permit. There a motherly old lady 
thawed me out by the blazing log fire of her home and 
comforted me with a bowl of steaming hot coffee. This 
set the clockwork of the rundown machinery to tick- 
ing once more ; and when, after a while, the men re- 
turned to the storm-beaten beach, my backbone had re- 
gained its wonted rigidity. We now continued to battle 
with the storm until the following night, and when 
gradually it subsided I felt gratified at the successful 
outcome of the stubborn fight we had put up against 
the enraged elements. 

Severely battered as the boat was we soon had her in 
seaworthy condition once more. Information now 



128 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

came from all around that the storm along the line of 
the river had been extremely destructive, and that on 
"The Chain," a rocky part of the Ohio twenty miles 
below, seven pairs of coal barges had foundered and 
their crews perished ; and at Mound City a steamer in 
midstream had been wrecked and blown to pieces. My 
appreciation of the hardships of river navigation had 
now been considerably enhanced by this experience, and 
I began to feel that the job ahead was anything but a 
Sunday-school picnic. 

A few days later, after having completed repairs, we 
untied the lines and departed for our destination. At 
Cairo, where the Mississippi is entered, I had business 
to transact. Instead of landing the boat, I rowed my- 
self ashore in the skiff, and the "broad horn" floated on 
at a pace which my friend Parkhill, who drives a 
hearse for Frank Blanchard, the undertaker, would 
call "a right smart gait." It was a frosty morning, with 
quite "an eager and a nipping air." After a stay on 
shore of a couple of hours, without breakfast, I left 
Cairo ravenously hungry. The boat by this time had 
quite a start, and led me a stern chase with ten miles of 
a pull at the oars. When at last I caught up my empty 
stomach was making loud calls for food ; but as break- 
fast was over, the omelette soufle with mushrooms, the 
sweetbreads a la Delmonico, the lamb chops au gratin, 
all consumed, and the tin platters and pint cups washed 
and sandpapered, I had to content myself with raw tur- 
nips ; and, in order to make them sprout properly, irri- 
gate the turnips with water from the river, thick with 
mud. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I29 

New Madrid, on the Missouri side, forty miles below 
Cairo, would be passed without special notice if it were 
not that this locality, in 1811, was the center of a dev- 
astating earthquake and general upheaval of the sur- 
rounding country. The horrors of the catastrophe still 
lived in the memories of old river men down to the days 
of which this memoir treats. Reelfoot lake, which was 
created by the earthquake, on the opposite side of the 
river, in Tennessee, contains a standing forest of large 
trees submerged when the earth here opened and during 
that violent eruption gave way. Where once the mock- 
ingbird sang and the lively woodpecker disported him- 
self the gamy bass and nimble pike now dart about in 
great schools among the remaining trunks of trees still 
standing erect in the water ; and in the clear fluid of the 
lake the duck hunter can, from the canoe, touch with 
his paddle the stumps of limbs on these ci-devant giants 
of the forest, which erstwhile touched the clouds and 
were swayed by the storm. 

Above Plum Point we tied up for soundings. The 
river at this place is very wide, and consequently at 
a low stage the water is very shoal. Of late years a 
United States River Commission, of which our fellow 
citizen from Indiana, Judge Taylor, is chairman, has 
spent large sums of money here on attempted better- 
ments of navigation. 

At Randolph, a village situated on the second Chicka- 
saw Bluff, the river is confined in a gorge and the 
channel is narrow. Here on a dark night the "Vir- 
ginia," a large passenger steamer, on her return trip 
from New Orleans, very nearly ran us down. A low 
10 



130 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

fog lay upon the water, and our lights could not be 
seen by the pilot of the steamer. She came so close 
that her larboard wheel grazed the side of the "Massac" 
and carried overboard two of the long sweeps and one 
of the crew ; and as the wide guards of the boat passed 
over our frail craft I anticipated nothing short of a 
muddy bath, caved-in ribs and a broken back from the 
revolving wheel. That instant there flashed across 
my mind an old German legend, telling of a crystal 
palace at the bottom of the Rhine filled with enchanting 
maidens, clad only in their own loveliness, where 
drowned boatmen are comforted and made happy by 
the bewitching queen. 

Shudderingly I wondered whether I should find any- 
thing like it in the mud at the bottom of the Missis- 
sippi, and how the sweet things would look if they 
were tailor made, with long trails cut on the bias, and 
gored, covering their fishy tails, and — ^but by this time 
we had come out safe and sound from under the threat- 
ening shadow of the big boat's guards and were grop- 
ing around in the fog to recover our lost man and the 
missing oars. 

By and by, in the dark, a landing was effected among 
the willows on the bank, and we tied up for the re- 
mainder of the night. Then, as I stretched out on my 
pallet, the words of Heinrich Heine came to me, where 
he says to himself, "Everything in the world can be dis- 
pensed with except the sun and myself. Without the 
latter there would be no world." 

The river, at that time of the year, is usually quite 
low, and snags in the bends, in those days, were as 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I3I 

thick as in the old Indian days were the arrows shot 
into the old woman's bustle while in her truck-patch 
she stooped to pick up an apronful of potatoes for 
dinner. The chute behind Island Thirty-seven bristled 
in a terrifying manner with these dangerous obstruc- 
tions. Trembling with apprehension we ran this nar- 
row cut, full of obstructions, at midnight; but as the 
swish and gurgle of the rapid running water gave 
notice of the whereabouts of the snags, it enabled us, 
in the dark, to successfully dodge some and ride down 
others. 

After passing Paddy's Hen and Chickens (Islands 
42, 3, 4 and 5) we landed at the city of Memphis for 
the purpose of laying in provisions. A little below the 
city is President's Island, one of the largest in this big 
river. It was on this island that afterwards, during the 
civil war. Mother Bickerdyke kept the cows and 
chickens, a steamboat load of which she had bought 
with money collected in the north, and with the milk 
from the cows and the eggs produced by the hens, had 
nursed the sick and comforted the wounded Union sol- 
diers in the hospitals at Memphis. 

One hundred and forty miles below, after passing 
Helena and the mouth of the St. Francis, we came to 
White river, which enters the Mississippi from the 
west. Somewhere in this neighborhood, in the year 
1541, De Soto first saw the "Father of Waters." He 
and his Spaniards, starting from the island of Cuba, 
had made their way up through the wilds of Florida, 
and from what is now Bolivar county, Mississippi, in 
hungry quest for gold, had crossed the great river, to 



132 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Starve and die in the wilderness west of that stream, 
without having found what they so eagerly sought for. 

In three or four more hours of floating we came to 
the Arkansas river. Here, just below the mouth of 
that river, stood Napoleon, a Jim Crow sort of a town, 
containing a couple of thousand inhabitants. In the 
early sixties, during a great flood, the Arkansas broke 
through its banks above the town and washed it clean 
off the face of the earth. It was the reshipping point 
and entrepot for much of the country drained by the 
river which destroyed it, and was quite a prosperous 
place. It contained a court-house, churches, numerous 
stores and dwellings and a United States marine hos- 
pital. When I last saw the locality where the town had 
been there remained on the edge of the river bank noth- 
ing but a tottering brick chimney, bemoaning the sad 
fate of a once prosperous, whisky-drinking and poker- 
playing community. What became of the corner lots, 
the mortgages, the principal citizens, the oldest inhab- 
itant, the Odd Fellows Hall and the jail, I have never 
been able to learn. 

We were now approaching the latitude of Spanish 
moss, where cotton begins to be a profitable crop, and 
is raised in great abundance. Some distance farther 
down the river is the locality from where, early in the 
nineteenth century, the Murel gang of outlaws oper- 
ated. Their field of enterprise extended over much of 
the territory of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. 
This band was a colossal combination of robbers, horse- 
thieves, negro stealers and counterfeiters. Murel, their 
chief, says the historian, "was bold, plucky, rapacious, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I33 

cruel, treacherous and inexpressibly vile." He was 
withal a great genius in deviltry and full of compre- 
hensive and far-reaching schemes. He planned, set 
on foot and nearly completed a formidable negro insur- 
rection, intending under its cover and by its aid to 
burn and plunder the city of New Orleans. This man 
had in his command, it is reported, one thousand out- 
laws and vagabonds, six hundred and fifty of which 
were the active operators, called strikers. The others, 
known as heads of council, the planners and plotters, 
were mostly domiciled in the surrounding country as 
squatters and planters. 

Stealing horses in one state and selling them in an- 
other was easily accomplished and profitable. The most 
lucrative iniquity, however, was to entice slaves to run 
away from their masters and make them come into the 
conspirators' camp. They would then sell the runaway 
in another neighborhood; and again the ignorant 
darky would be persuaded by a promise of freedom in 
Canada, and half the proceeds of another sale, to escape 
from master number two and return to his treacherous 
friends. Some negroes in this manner were sold and 
resold three and four times, and realized for their kid- 
napers as much as three and four thousand dollars ; but, 
as after this the fear of detection increased, it became 
necessary to get rid of so dangerous a witness, and the 
poor wretch was knocked in the head and his carcass 
thrown into the Mississippi. 

When Murel traveled he frequently, in the disguise 
of an itinerant preacher, visited camp-meetings and re- 
ligious revivals, and it is said that, under the spell of 



134 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

his eloquence, his hearers would forget all about their 
horses, which, in the meantime, were run off by the 
glib-tongued exhorter's confederates. The only things 
absolutely safe when this Rinaldo Rinaldini was around 
were the stars in the firmament ; they were too far off 
to reach. In his operations on the road Murel displayed 
ingenious ways in which to dispose of his victims. For 
instance, before he would sink the body of a murdered 
traveler in the nearby river, creek or bayou, after strip- 
ping it of money, clothes and valuables, he would dis- 
embowel the cadaver, so it might not rise to the sur- 
face to tell tales. 

With acceleration of speed, which steam and im- 
proved machinery brought to boating on the Missis- 
sippi, the formidable array of snags became a great 
annoyance to navigation and menace to life and prop- 
erty. Soon after the close of the war, through the 
efforts of a commission representing seven western 
states, and of which I was a member, congress was in- 
duced to give financial aid for the betterment of river 
navigation in the west; and when the United States 
Engineer Corps took things in hand the snags had 
seen their last and best days, and a comprehensive 
system of light stations was established at the same 
time to mark the crossings, shoals and heads of bends. 

Notwithstanding all this, navigation of this erratic 
stream is, and always will be, beset with many uncon- 
trollable difficulties, the worst of which is the great 
instability of the banks and their constant disposition to 
crumble and cave. In an alluvium like that of the Mis- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I35 

sissippi this means incessant changes in the course of 
the river and its channel. 

The pilot wheel of a Mississippi steamer, upon the 
handling of which depends the lives of passengers and 
crew, besides the safety of a valuable cargo, should 
be intrusted to men only who from long-continued prac- 
tice have intimate acquaintance with the river and 
thorough knowledge of its secrets, and who, possessed 
of courage and self-reliance, can be depended upon to 
act coolly, promptly and with decision in emergencies. 

For the pilot, an intimate acquaintance with the 
river means that he must know and remember, not only 
by daylight, but in the night as well, the shape of the 
sky-line of the timber on either side of him, the form 
of which is of an exasperating sameness, and does not, 
on dark nights, so readily yield information of one's 
whereabouts as does the house number in the street 
your friend lives in. It also means knowledge of the ex- 
act place, shape and size of each one of the one hundred 
and thirty islands, and their various towheads ; the 
chutes around and behind them; the ''cut-of¥s" and 
culs-de-sac ; and the bars, shoals and crossings over the 
entire length of the river. 

The caving banks and shifting channel, together with 
the varying level of the water (the rise and fall at the 
mouth of the Ohio amounts to fifty feet), complicates 
matters for the pilot infinitely ; and I want to emphasize 
the fact that "to know the river," as the pilot puts it, 
requires close study, intelligent observation and a reten- 
tive memory. The distance from Cairo to New Or- 
leans in round numbers is one thousand miles. Both 



136 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

banks together make this a shore line of two thousand 
miles to be learned by the navigator. Now, when we 
consider that on returning from New Orleans the river, 
with its shores, is seen from an entirely different angle 
of vision, and that a new survey has to be made, and 
the pilot's knowledge and memory taxed with another 
two thousand miles, the problem has grown into big 
dimensions for the memory of any ordinary man to en- 
compass. The difficulties, of course, increase on what a 
river man calls "a dark and dirty night." 

The Mississippi, from where the Missouri joins it, a 
little way above St. Louis, to its mouth in the Gulf of 
Mexico, by its windings, is something over thirteen 
hundred miles in length. The crow, as it flies, can make 
the journey in just half that distance. While the river 
wallows in the alluvium of its own making, it carries 
with it on its way out to the sea, and deposits at its 
mouth annually (according to Mark Twain), earth 
enough to make a mound two hundred and forty (240) 
feet high and a mile square. It writhes in snake-like 
convolutions ; and some of its great bends have a sweep- 
ing radius of over thirty miles and form horseshoes of 
which the heels are frequently separated not over a half 
to three-quarters of a mile. 

Across this separating strip of level bottom the crews 
of two steamers may see and almost talk to each other, 
and yet be three hours, running time, apart. Once 
there was a neck of land opposite Port Hudson, Louis- 
iana, only half a mile wide, and it was thirty-five miles 
around by the channel. During a freshet many years 
ago the river straightened itself and broke through this 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I37 

half-mile barrier, thereby reducing its length thirty- 
five miles. Raccourci Cut-off, below Red River Land- 
ing, was made seventy-five or eighty years ago. It 
reduced the giant's length another twenty-eight miles. 
Many other changes of this character have taken place 
since the settlement of the country, and the Mississippi 
below Cairo since that time, geographers claim, has 
reduced its length over two hundred miles. 

Mark Twain, in his book, "Life on the Mississippi," 
philosophizes on this subject in the following quaint 
and humorous manner : "In the space of one hundred 
and seventy-six years the lower Mississippi has short- 
ened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is 
an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. 
Therefore, any calm person who is not blind or idiotic 
can see that in the old oolitic silurian period, just a mil- 
lion years ago next November, the lower Mississippi 
river was upward of one million three hundred thou- 
sand miles long and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico 
like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person 
can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from 
now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three- 
quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have 
joined their streets together, and be plodding comforta- 
bly along under a single mayor and a mutual board of 
aldermen. There is something fascinating about sci- 
ence ; one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out 
of such trifling investment of fact." 

Fog on a crooked river, however wide between 
banks, is a much dreaded dispensation of Providence. 
The skipper of a flatboat, proudly treading the quarter- 



138 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

deck of his unwieldly tub, overcome by a feeling of 
helplessness, at once becomes confused. The cockles 
of his heart droop and the tail of his ambition goes 
down. He loses all reckoning and can not tell in what 
direction to grope for the protecting bank, that a 
friendly stump or overhanging tree may be found where 
to tie the headline. Should the vessel drift upon a 
sloping beach, the receding waters will leave her high 
and dry a hundred thousand miles from market; or 
should she ground and ride a sand-bar, the restless cur- 
rent is sure to wash the shifting sands amidships out 
from underneath and leave her stranded with a broken 
back, or, worse than all, should a steamer, equally help- 
less, fail to take notice of the racket made by tin pans 
and shrieks of the crew, it would be finis with the flat- 
boat P. D. Q., and the crew as well. 

One night, after crossing the line between Arkansas 
and Louisiana, we were fortunate enough to tie up just 
as a thick fog began to settle over the surface of the 
water. The boys, in spite of my remonstrance, insisting 
on going ashore, climbed the levee to reconnoitre the 
plantation. They had been gone but a short time when, 
running like hares, they returned, tumbling over each 
other down the bank in a panic. They were trying to 
escape the overseer who, mounted on a swift mule and 
armed with a shotgun, was close upon their heels in 
hot pursuit. As he approached the edge of the bank 
above us he threatened to cut the lines and set us 
adrift in the fog. This, of course, I could not permit ; 
and as, like Falstaff, I would give no man reasons on 
compulsion, if reasons were as plenty as blackberries, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 1 39 

the overseer and my crew both went to shooting. 
When the man on the bank "in Kendal green" had 
enough of it he retired and left us masters of the sit- 
uation. It was then found that Hawkins, the pilot, 
had received a couple of buckshot in his left leg, while 
Conny, the lively lad from Skibbereen, whose over- 
loaded gun had kicked him in the jaw, set up a howl, 
lamenting that "the nigger-driving h'athen hadn't been 
hanged the day his grandmother was born." 

By and by, on a quiet morning in December, after 
passing the mouth of the Yazoo river, the city of 
Vicksburg came in sight. It was here, in later years, 
during the terrible siege, John Hay tells us, that the 
black man, "Banty Tim," "trumped Death's ace" by 
carrying Sergeant Tilmon Joy from the field through 
"that fire-proof, gilt-edged hell" of a rebel fusillade. 
On the morning we floated by, wagon loads of cotton 
bales could be seen coming and going upon that peace- 
ful blufif, and the carol and chant from the throats of 
the darkies rolled across the water, through the hazy at- 
mosphere, in harmonious waves of sound. 

One hundred miles farther down we reached the 
beautiful city of Natchez, which was founded in the 
early days of the eighteenth century by dTberville. 
That part of the city which lies on top of a high bluff 
overlooking the smiling expanse of highly cultivated 
cotton-fields in the opposite low lands of Louisiana is 
attractive and healthful. Nothing of the sort can be 
said for that section of the town known as "Natchez 
under the Hill." It was here that once upon a time 
Captain Russell hitched his boat's hawser to a gambling 



140 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

den which stood near the bank of the river, and pre- 
pared to pull the "dad-blasted shebang" with all it con- 
tained into the muddy waves of the Mississippi be- 
cause the proprietor of the joint, a gambler, had re- 
fused to give back to a passenger on board the boat 
the money he had cheated him out of at poker. When, 
at the word of command from the doughty captain to 
"Back her strong," the first turn of the steamer's 
wheels tightened the rope, and the shanty began to 
creak and crumble, the obdurate owner weakened, gave 
up the swag, saved his Monte Carlo, and by so doing 
indorsed the truism, that "he who turns and runs 
away, may live to bluff another day !" 

For the purpose of laying in provisions I determined 
to land at Natchez ; but as it was after dark, we made 
our landing a little too high up, and by the strong cur- 
rent of a whirling eddy, which here sets sharply in 
shore, were thrown so violently against a raft of large 
cypress logs, that the boat's bow was badly stove in. 
As the gurgling sound of water rushing through 
broken planks became audible, my brave and death- 
defying crew, remembering Napoleon's words on the 
disastrous field of Waterloo, "Sauve qui peut,'' like 
rats, scampered over the sides of the sinking ship for 
shore, where they disappeared in the deep shadows of 
the night, to disport themselves with the twin deities, 
Bacchus and Venus. The pilot alone remained. As 
the water was flowing in fast, he and I rushed below 
to rescue our few belongings. 

On pulling the bed clothes together, it occurred to 
me that the blankets and quilts, as wadding in the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I4I 

break, might be of service. With an armful of them 
I ran forward, and at the place of damage hung the 
bulk of them overboard. The suck, created by the in- 
flow, carried the wad into the break; and while the 
water-pressure held it in place Hank Hawkins and I 
were enabled to jetson some of the cargo. Thus light- 
ened, her bow soon rose out of the water sufficiently 
high to enable us, by the light of a lantern, to fit in 
new plank. By break of day the calking was com- 
pleted, and the "Massac," once more seaworthy, after 
being pumped, continued her voyage as soon as the 
truants returned from shore. Like ^sop's two pots, 
one of earthenware and the other of brass, which, 
floating down a stream together, had come in collision, 
mine, the fragile one, had been smashed. Moral : The 
weaker should always give the stronger a wide berth 
and the right of the road. 

Red river, on its course from the Rocky mountains 
near Santa Fe, fifteen hundred miles away, comes into 
the Mississippi seventy miles below Natchez. Some 
distance above Nachitoches on the Red is, or rather 
was, the extensive obstruction widely known as the 
''Raft," which blocked the shallow and divided channel 
of this large stream for a long distance. Farther up 
the river is unobstructed, and, navigable for hundreds 
of miles, it runs through a fertile country blest with a 
mild and equable climate. 

From the mouth of Red river, the waters of the 
Mississippi no longer flow in one regular channel, but, 
separating into a number of branches or bayous, they 
wend their way through lakes and swamps to the gulf, 



142 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

in lines nearly parallel with the parent stream. On the 
west, among others, we have the Bayous Atchafalaya, 
Plaquemine, Teche, and La Fourche. The latter can 
best be compared to a beautiful ship canal. The sugar 
plantations along this bayou are so numerous that 
with their stately white residences surrounded by 
broad-pillared galleries, shaded by magnolias and or- 
namental shrubbery, they form a continuous town, 
stretching from one extremity to the other. On the 
east of the main river the principal outlet is the Bayou 
Iberville, which communicates with the gulf through 
Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain and Borgne. All this 
region is in the delta of the Mississippi, and its lands 
are subject to frequent inundations. After entering the 
delta we passed, one hundred and fifty miles above 
New Orleans, the city of Baton Rouge. The white 
dome on the capitol of the state of Louisiana, em- 
bowered in green foliage, and situated on a gently roll- 
ing elevation, makes an attractive picture, quite invit- 
ing as seen from the river. 

We had now arrived at what is called the "Sugar 
Coast," where, behind substantial and well-seasoned 
levees, the thickly settled and highly cultivated coun- 
try lies secure from overflows, serene and inviting. 

The general aspect of the great river between Cairo 
and this point in all but its immensity is commonplace 
and uninteresting, and as magnitude and dreary same- 
ness become tiresome and oppressive, the lack of in- 
centive for the emotions disappoints the sentimental 
traveler. 

I shall long remember the tedious bends, long 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I43 

reaches and treacherous cut-offs ; the low lying islands ; 
the ragged towheads and bristling snags ; the confus- 
ing fogs; the somber density of the unbroken wall of 
dark forest, with impenetrable canebrakes, and the 
skeletons of deadened trees marking the location of a 
wood-yard with ranks of cordwood. 

It is here we find the wretched windowless cabin, 
half of which is mud chimney, and the wood-chopping 
squatter, with his chills-and-fever-stricken family, stol- 
idly looking forward to the desolating annual inunda- 
tion of his home. 

The land where the coon dog is more highly prized 
than the milch-cow is not an inviting habitat for civil- 
ized man. 

With clear, sparkling water, grassy sloping banks 
and towering shores commensurate with the size of the 
leviathan, emotions would break their necks to get at 
him who is receptive ; but on a turbulent sea of mud, 
rushing through so flat and uninteresting a landscape, 
emotions are about the toughest things in the world to 
conjure up. From such material it is easier to manu- 
facture a dozen facts than one emotion. 

It was comforting that at last we were in an open, 
cultivated country, where balmy breezes fan the cheeks, 
an unobstructed outlook cheers the heart, and merry 
sunshine smiles on a prosperous land adorned with 
roses and hedges of calla lilies. Harmonious voices 
broke forth from the throats of my crew in such ditties 
as, "Oh! Buffalo gals ain't you comin' out to-night, 
comin' out to-night, comin' out to-night, to dance by 
the light of the moon?" and we were answered on 



144 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

shore by melodious-voiced negroes at work in the 
fields. 

The weariness of sleepless nights and anxious vigils 
passed from my spirit, and in the relaxation which 
security brought I stretched out at full length on deck, 
where the cooling zephyrs of the south breeze fanned 
my unshaven cheek. The boys having begun to feel the 
enlivening effect of the change, awakened from their 
mental torpor, became hilarious. Cy reached for his 
Stradivarius, and Wesley with supple joints shuffled 
off "The Arkansaw Traveler," until you'd have thought 
"the devil was in his toe," and while we floated 
smoothly down the long, straight reaches of the placid 
stream, the remaining members of the crew did not 
have to be "piped up" for duty. 

At last, on the day before Christmas, we made port ; 
and the good ship "Massac" safely completed her voy- 
age by tying up at the levee of the city of New Or- 
leans, then known as the Paris of America. 

It used to be the kindly practice of up-stream steam- 
ers when passing, to throw out to flatboatmen news- 
papers brought from New Orleans. These welcome 
messengers had brought me the unwelcome message 
of a dull and depressed market for staves. This was 
disappointing, and somewhat tempered the gratifica- 
tion I felt at having on my maiden venture brought 
so frail a craft more than a thousand miles through 
fogs, storms and wreck, over a low, declining and 
snag-studded river, safely into port. 

The next morning, after having discharged the crew, 
I ate my Christmas corn-dodger and drank the watery 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I45 

self-brewed coffee, without sugar or cream, alone, but 
with relish, and was thankful things were no worse. 

The little money on hand I had divided among the 
crew ; and with my I. O. Us for balance of wages due 
in their pockets, they had shipped on the steamer "Em- 
pire" for home. 

Water craft, like babies and New Year's resolutions, 
are uncertain and require to be closely watched. As 
my purse was quite empty and I had no place where 
to borrow I could not hire help, and consequently, 
from this time on, had to stand both the day and night 
watches alone. During the tedious hours of the night, 
by the light of a lantern, I worked the pumps ; and 
when, during the day, overcome by drowsiness, I 
would go off into the Land of Nod, it was with one eye 
half-cocked to watch the other. 

A picayune (six and a quarter cents) at a near-by 
sailor's tavern, with its glass of thin beer, furnished 
an abundance of free lunch to satisfy hunger. When 
picayunes, however, got scarce, I often felt like imi- 
tating the starving Dutch defenders on the ramparts 
of the city of Leyden, who threatened to eat their left 
arms so that the right ones might retain strength 
wherewith to defend their city (and I my boat). 

Now, as time went on and no betterment in the 
market became apparent, I accepted from the captain 
of a Dutch clipper ship, sailing for Rotterdam, an 
offer for my boat and cargo. This sale furnished suffi- 
cient money to satisfy creditors, and enough cash to 
defray the expense of my trip home. From the well- 
known story that Bernadotte, king of Sweden, had 
II 



146 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

once in Paris been a penniless bootblack, and having 
read somewhere that Cornelius Vanderbilt had started 
life earning fifty cents a day only, I took comfort, com- 
menced rebuilding my air-castles forthwith, and re- 
solved to imitate their examples. Was not ''the world 
mine oyster" ? The only regret I felt over the financial 
fiasco was the loss of a friend's money, which he had 
invested in the venture, and which, together with my 
own, had vanished without leaving behind seed enough 
wherewith to start another crop of promising expecta- 
tions. 

That night, as a guest of Captain Van Houten, I 
dined at "Victor's" on pompano and teal duck, freely 
irrigated with a choice vintage from sunny France; 
and he and I spun yarns and lingered over our cofifee 
and havanas until late into the night. 

I was elated over the successful manner in which I 
had navigated my argosy to such a degree that when 
the burgundy began to get busy I fancied myself a 
second Sir Joseph Porter, a future "Ruler of the 
Queen's Naivee," which entertained and amused my 
good-natured companion so much that we closed the 
night's session highly elated and thoroughly satisfied 
with each other. 

Early the next morning I visited the French market, 
one of the attractions of the Crescent City, and drank 
the coffee for which this market is duly celebrated. 
Under the intoxicating aroma of the Mocha I made the 
discovery that the palms in front of the cathedral in 
Jackson Square were real, and not, as with us, made 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I47 

of tin, painted green, and that the oranges were so big 
that it took three only to make a dozen. 

On the evening of that day, swift of wing like the 
homing pigeon, I took flight back to my Hoosier home, 
where, in due time, I arrived light of purse but heavy 
with experience. 



WAR TIMES ON A MISSISSIPPI RIVER 
STEAMBOAT 

The steamer "Fanny Bullitt," a side-wheeler of good 
dimensions and fair speed, of which I was part owner 
and head clerk at the time the war broke out, cleared 
port under Confederate sailing papers and made her 
last departure from New Orleans for Louisville on 
April 29, 1861. At Memphis, where the rebel author- 
ities looked on us as Yankees, and I was known to be 
a republican, we barely escaped arrest, and the boat 
confiscation. We arrived at Louisville with an empty 
cabin; and after discharging a scanty cargo of rosin, 
turpentine and a little sugar, the boat went to the "bone- 
yard" below the falls at Portland, where, until Novem- 
ber of that year, she "choked a ringbolt." 

Now that war had actually begun it became apparent 
that steamboating on the Mississippi was at an end, 
and that the "J. M. White," the "Shotwell" the 
"Adams," the "Eclipse," and other swift and luxuri- 
ously appointed steamers, once the pride of the Mis- 
sissippi river valley, were doomed to be recollections 
of the tempi passati, to be commemorated only in pic- 
tures adorning hotel lobbies and boarding-houses. 

From an early day it had been the ardent wish and 
nightly dream of every barefooted boy on the banks 
of the river to be, or to become, the commander of one 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I49 

of these fiery dragons with glittering interior. The 
mighty power of the president at Washington, and the 
transcendental glory of the man with the big horn in 
the village brass band, paled and faded when compared 
with the exalted loftiness of the captain, as with the 
haughty air of a "rooster's tail at sunrise" he proudly 
trod the hurricane deck of one of these floating palaces. 

Our captain, a Kentuckian and southern sympathizer, 
from constant worry over the deplorable condition of 
the country, fell sick, and in the early summer, died of 
a broken heart. At his death, the care of the boat and 
her considerable indebtedness fell to me ; and when the 
patriotic boys in the north, at the call of the president, 
shouldered their guns, and with colors flying followed 
the fife and drum to glory, I found my hands tied and 
was thus prevented from enlisting. The summer wore 
on in anxious and irritating inactivity, and when, in 
the autumn, I proposed to offer the "Fanny's" services 
to the Union forces then gathering on the lower Ohio, 
I met with determined opposition from our Kentucky 
owners, who would not let the boat go into service 
against their southern friends and kinfolks. 

Restive under the situation, and determined to break 
the deadlock, I bestirred myself. I was fortunate 
enough, with the aid of a friend, to raise the money in 
bank wherewith to buy out the disaffected and rebel- 
lious partners and thereby increased my already heavy 
indebtedness. Money in those days was very hard to 
get, and it took a Caesarian operation to deliver the 
bank of sufficient cash to satisfy my demand. I thus 
became the owner of five-sixths of the "Fanny Bullitt," 



150 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

and I also became her commander. The other one- 
sixth interest remained the property of my friend Cap- 
tain Ronald Fisher, a stanch Union man, who con- 
tinued second in command of the boat. 

Organized bands of southern sympathizers, in the 
fall of that year, were operating on the shores of the 
lower Ohio in southwestern Kentucky. They were en- 
gaged in smuggling contraband munitions of war into 
the Confederacy, and in disturbing the people in the 
towns and villages on the Illinois side of the river. As 
yet, along this part of Mason and Dixon's line, no mili- 
tary posts had been established by the federal govern- 
ment. 

At Shawneetown, ten miles below the mouth of the 
Wabash, an Illinois regiment of cavalry had gone into 
camp for recruiting and organizing purposes. Here I 
directed my steps, and to the officers of the regiment 
proposed to bring my man-of-war and help them put 
down the rebellion "in ninety days," and whip those 
blustering Johnnies who constantly boasted that each 
of them could easily whip five of us "northern mud- 
sills." This offer of mine to volunteer was promptly 
accepted by the colonel and his officers. I knew full 
well that authority for such service vested in the war 
department only, and that no pay could be expected. I 
therefore stipulated that I should be enrolled on the 
roster of this horse regiment as captain of "horse 
marines," without shoulder straps, and should have 
authority to draw rations for my men from the com- 
missary of the regiment, and that oil for the machinery, 
cordage and oakum should be furnished by the quarter- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I5I 

master ; while the necessary fuel I engaged to requisi- 
tion boldly from neighboring coal mines. These pro- 
ceedings were altogether irregular, not ordered by the 
war department, nor authorized in army regulations, 
but by us hotheads were held to be highly patriotic, 
laudable and necessary to bring the war to an end and 
''hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree." 

The colonel of the regiment, a pet of Governor Dick 
Yates, was troubled with ingrowing nerve; but he 
shall be nameless. I may call him "Old Liver-Pad," 
for in civil life he was a quack doctor. 

When cattle felt indisposition, 
And stood in need of a physician ; 
When murrain reigned in hogs or sheep, 
And chickens languished of the pip, 

then the colonel was always found at his best; and it 
was asserted, without fear of successful contradiction, 
that he had to a nicety figured out 

How many scores a flea will jump 
Of his own length, from head to rump. 

On taking the boat from her berth at Portland, where 
she had lain all summer and autumn, I "spared no wis- 
dom" to induce the wharfmaster to take my I. O. U. 
in liquidation of accumulated port charges instead of 
cash, which I had not. Shrinkage during the dry sum- 
mer months had opened seams of the hull above the 
water line, and when the caulking let go they admitted 
water freely. This defect had been carelessly over- 
looked before starting. On the way down the river 



152 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

I noticed a perceptible settling of the boat, and to 
keep her from sinking I hastened to turn her head 
to the bank at Cloverport, Kentucky. Here, while 
I "blowed" the bellows, I had the village blacksmith 
at short metre hammer out some caulking irons ; and 
on a hastily constructed float, the engineer, the pilot 
and I lowered ourselves overboard, and with the oakum 
on hand, tightened up the leaky seams as best we 
could. As I had but a small complement of men, it 
took us all night to pump out the bilge before we 
could proceed and finish the two hundred and forty 
miles intervening between Louisville and Shawnee- 
town. At our arrival amidst alarums of drums and 
the huzzas from warriors and citizens on shore, we 
hoisted the stars and stripes at the jackstaff, and never 
lowered them again from that time on. As I had no 
money wherewith to pay wages, the crew patriotically 
went into writings with me, stipulating that unless the 
state of Illinois or the federal government at some fu- 
ture day paid the boat for her services, no claim for 
wages should lie against me nor the boat. 

We were all of us, the captain as well as his crew, 
in those days so impecunious that our tobacco was 
begged from the boys in blue, who were well supplied ; 
of all other delicacies only the Sunday pie remained, 
which, for want of fruit, was made of beans until bugs 
and worms were found in the beans. At the little 
old post of Shawneetown that winter I was looked 
upon as representing the navy and feted accordingly 
by the patriotic dames of the town. This secured for 
me, now and then, a much needed "square meal," in 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 1 53 

return for which I never failed, in the most engaging 
manner, to make myself agreeable to maid and matron 
alike at any of their dances and evening parties. 

In support of the proverb that "a sitting hen gathers 
no moss," we bestirred ourselves strenuously in raids 
and expeditions along the Kentucky shores, where, 
under orders from the officers of the regiment and 
with the aid of its men, we pursued marauders, cap- 
tured needed forage for the horses of our regiment, 
and confiscated and destroyed ferry-boats and other 
watercraft used for purposes of smuggling and dis- 
turbing that portion of the people in "Egypt" on the 
opposite shore of the river who were loyal, and who 
were not out in the smartweed and dog-fennel at mid- 
night plotting treason and drilling with the Sons of 
Liberty and Knights of the Golden Circle. 

By the time the federal forces had established mili- 
tary posts at Paducah and Smithland, early in 1862, 
there came an order from General Grant to report 
with the 'Tanny Bullitt" at headquarters in Cairo. 
On our arrival there my boat, together with other 
steamers, was ordered to anchor out in the middle of 
the Ohio and await orders. Meanwhile I kept up com- 
munication with the shore, and during my daily re- 
ports to General Grant had, when the tobacco smoke 
was not too dense, favorable opportunities to observe 
the silent commander. At Grant's boarding-house, 
where Charles A. Dana and George Boutwell, the 
latter an ex-governor of Massachusetts, then in Cairo 
on a war mission, and myself were the only other 
boarders, we found the general fairly communicative 



154 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

and genial. Captain Hillier, Colonel Clark Lago and 
Master of Transportation Wash Graham, of the staff, 
were gay and sporty, while Colonel Rawlins, who after- 
wards arose to eminence, was earnestly devoted to his 
duties as chief of staff. 

After we had taken part, under General McClernand, 
in a reconnoisance down the Mississippi near Colum- 
bus, Kentucky, which brought no results, I was sent 
with artillery and ammunition to Fort Henry on the 
Tennessee river. Here Grant, with the aid of Com- 
modore Foote's gunboats, made his first draw in the 
game which opened to him the western vitals of the 
Confederacy. We remained during the fight and then 
returned to Cairo. 

Fort Donaldson on the Cumberland river surrendered 
on February 15, 1862. I was there with the "Fanny 
Bullitt" on the day of the surrender, and was ordered 
the next day to load up and take away from the battle- 
field to unknown hospital accommodations the first of 
our seriously wounded men, two hundred of whom 
completed the cargo. The season was an excessively 
wet one and the camp and battlefield were knee-deep in 
yellow clay, which, kneaded into slush, made life very 
sloppy and disagreeable for everybody. 

The Cumberland river, out of banks, with its turbid 
drift-laden flood, rushed along at millrace speed. Sur- 
geons could not be spared from the battlefield, so that 
I had to depart without a single doctor or nurse. As 
there were but few hospitals thus early in the war the 
"Fanny's" destination was, after reporting to General 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 1 55 

Sherman at Paducah, mouth of the Tennessee, left 
entirely to my judgment. 

On leaving Donaldson we had not much more than 
straightened out, laying the boat in her course down 
stream, when night lowered her somber mantle upon 
us, and a stormy, dark and ugly night it proved to be. 
Barney Seals, the only pilot on board, was drunk ; and 
as through Egyptian darkness with lightning speed 
we rushed down a bend or rounded a point of that 
crooked river, the strings of my heart would tighten 
until the blood receding, would all but leave it at a 
standstill. The intoxicated Barney's catlike eyes, il- 
lumined as they were by the fumes arising from the 
liquor within, enabled him, however, to bring us safely 
past all submerged banks and invisible deathdealing 
obstructions. He skillfully managed to keep the boat 
out of the woods and away from cornfields, and held 
her steadily in the marks. 

As in the course of the night, for a short space, I 
left my post on the hurricane deck to look in upon 
the cabin, with its hospital of wounded sufferers, I 
stumbled over dead bodies brought, as they had died, 
from the cabin to the guards of the boiler deck. In 
the dimly lighted interior, where two hundred men 
lay on blood-stained straw, and feverish moans filled 
the air, a horrible vision came to my distressed 
brain. It pictured possible shipwreck. I could see 
the wounded men, with broken legs and maimed arms, 
frantically struggle and helplessly sink to their death 
in the merciless waves of the turbid flood. 

Horrified and disheartened at my helplessness and 



156 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

turning to escape this nightmare, I suddenly came upon 
a woman, who had entered through one of the cabin 
doors. She was of middle age, broad and stanch of 
posture, and had a kindly but resolute face. Her 
sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and the skirt 
of her calico gown was tucked back. She carried in 
one hand a pail of hot water, and in the other an 
armful of the boat's bed-sheets and pillow-slips, torn 
into strips for bandages. Following her were two deck- 
hands, carrying additional pails of hot water from the 
boilers below. 

Spellbound at the sight of a woman (the only one 
of her sex on board) who had come as a volunteer 
and unauthorized, I followed her every movement as 
she dressed wounds, washed the blood and grime from 
them, spoke encouraging words to the fever-racked 
sufferers, and took last parting messages for widowed 
wives and sorrowing mothers from dying men, until 
I could see a halo of golden light encircle and illumine 
the head of this veritable Mater Dolorosa. 

Mrs. Bickerdyke, a woman of great administrative 
ability and determination, came to Cairo as a volunteer 
nurse at the time General Grant assumed command. 
She was at Donaldson when it fell, and on the even- 
ing of the "Fanny's" departure for the Ohio river, unac- 
companied, she had boarded the boat without orders 
or asking permission from any one. In the dead of 
night she appeared amongst us as an angel of mercy, 
and quietly went to work tO' relieve suffering. In her 
efforts she appropriated everything needful, and freely 
called on the crew of the boat for aid, which was cheer- 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I57 

fully given and never refused. From the time she left 
us at Paducah the next day until the close of the war 
I never lost trace of this remarkable woman. 

In appreciation of her kindly efforts and helpful 
work among the boys in blue she soon became known 
as Mother Bickerdyke; and when General Grant dis- 
covered her eminent executive ability and courage, the 
lines of his army and doors of the hospitals were opened 
without restraint; and she was invested with such 
power as, from that time on, proved a menace to 
drunken hospital stewards and a warning to dissolute 
or neglectful army surgeons. 

To illustrate the resourcefulness of this woman, I will 
relate one only of her many strategic and successful 
moves. While in Memphis aiding the authorities in 
charge of the extensive army hospitals she one day 
disappeared, and no one knew her whereabouts. After 
a time, when she returned, it was on a steamer loaded 
to repletion with cows and chickens, which live stock, 
with money collected "on change" from merchants in 
Milwaukee, Chicago and elsewhere, she had bought 
and paid for. These animals she landed on President's 
Island in the Mississippi river opposite the city, where, 
under her supervision, they were cared for by ''contra- 
band" negroes ; and thus in abundance did she provide 
the two needful luxuries, milk and eggs, for the sick 
and convalescent boys in blue, whose undying grati- 
tude thus deservedly she earned. 

Mary Livermore, who admired her greatly, and who 
was her co-worker during the days of the war, relates 
that at a time later on Mrs. Bickerdyke, who had prom- 



158 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

ised her a visit in Boston, did not ring the door-bell 
until ten o'clock at night, although she had arrived 
in town as early as eight in the morning. 

"I learned," says Mrs. Livermore, "that the train 
had brought her to the city early enough, but that she 
had spent the whole day at the police court, house of 
correction, and similar places in Boston, searching after 
one of her 'boys' who had gone wrong. She then 
lived in San Francisco and the boy's family also lived 
there. She at that time was well-nigh eighty years old. 
I said in despair, 'Mother Bickerdyke, haven't you got 
through with such work yet? You are too old to be 
running around so now. Why will you do it?' She 
sprang up from the couch where she lay exhausted 
from the day's worry, and standing in the middle of 
the floor, cried, 'Because, Mary Livermore, I am com- 
missioned by the Lord God Almighty to help every 
poor, desolate, wretched man that I can. He will al- 
ways have two friends, God and me.' " 

A violet streak in the east, and then a luminous mist, 
followed by the golden chariot of Apollo, announced 
that day had come at last, to dispel the horrors of 
the night and soothe the misery of the afflicted. The 
blessed light was hailed with satisfaction by all on 
board; and those who, with closed eyes, lay stiff and 
stark upon the deck, appeared peaceful and submissive 
to their lot as their forms emerged from the gloom. 

Arrived at Paducah I promptly reported at head- 
quarters to General Sherman, only to learn that he had 
no place to send me and the poor sufferers in my 
charge; and over a glass of brandy, in which I joined 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I59 

him, he deplored the utter lack of hospital accommoda- 
tions. 

While taking our drink a thundering racket from 
the heavy footsteps of burly, giant-like General Wil- 
liam Nelson announced the sudden arrival of that indi- 
vidual. Nelson, in command of a division, on his way 
to reinforce General Buel, had his forces on a fleet of 
steamers which lay at that moment out in the river 
opposite Paducah, awaiting the signal to proceed up 
the Cumberland. 

It will be remembered that this officer, brother of 
my deceased friend. Colonel Tom Nelson of Terre 
Haute, was killed at the Gait House in Louisville dur- 
ing the war. General Jeff Davis, a gallant Indianian, 
dispatched the bully with a well-aimed shot of his 
pistol, in retribution for an uncalled-for and wanton 
insult offered him by Nelson. 

The scanty and incomplete hospital accommodations 
at Cairo and Mound City, fifty miles below Paducah, 
had already been exhausted; and Paducah then had 
not a single hospital bed prepared. So General Sher- 
man, though powerless "to order," in a kindly and 
helpful manner, "advised" to try Louisville, where he 
thought I would find relief. Without doctors or nurses, 
a further journey of four hundred miles, climbing a 
six-mile current, in a river filled with heavy drift, 
meant a tedious trip for the boat, and offered a dolor- 
ous outlook for the wounded and suffering men, who, 
from this time on, had to do without even Mother 
Bickerdyke. This good woman was needed in Cairo, 
and she reluctantly left us to our fate. 



l60 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Anxious to reach sorely needed help I determined to 
waste no time, and having 

Promptly found my resolution 
I quick put it in execution, 

by weighting down the safety valve. With steam raised 
to the danger point, I now strove to overcome the 
heavy current of the swollen river. 

Arrived at Shawneetown, where everybody knew me, 
I sent for some of the women and leading business 
men of the place, and after having told my tale of woe, 
I was partially relieved. Under the stimulus of their 
charitable and patriotic impulses all the Illinois men on 
board were taken ashore. 

At Henderson, Kentucky, forty-five miles farther up 
the river, those citizens of the prosperous little city who 
were loyal to the Union cause, took what few Ken- 
tuckians I had. 

At Evansville the authorities took all my Indiana 
men ashore, where, at the hands of the good women 
of the place and other patriotic citizens, sorely needed 
attention was furnished in kindly abundance. 

This was done by direction of Governor Morton at 
Indianapolis, with whom I had promptly entered into 
telegraphic communication. By orders from the gov- 
ernor we were also supplied with stores and medicines, 
doctors and nurses and every other thing needful to 
the remaining patients ; and when I turned the "Fanny" 
loose upon the last two hundred miles of this eventful 
voyage it was not only under a less dangerous weight 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN l6l 

on the steam gauge, but with a let-up of pressure on 
my spirits as well. 

At Louisville I found no difficulty from lack of 
hospital accommodations. On account of the extraor- 
dinary height of the river, however, no landing could 
be effected until, with much difficulty, I succeeded in 
sticking the boat's nose into Fourth street, a long ways 
up among the stores and offices of the city. Here we 
unloaded the last of our human freight into ambulances 
and upon spring wagons. 

Now that the trip was ended, an inspection showed 
the condition of the cabin to be that of an abattoir after 
a hard day's killing. Every stanchion and bulkhead 
was smeared with human blood, and the boat's decks 
gave evidence of the abundant loss of the life-giv- 
ing fluid on the spot where suffering humanity had 
breathed its last. 

On returning to Cairo I was kept on waiting orders, 
and, like Mahomet's coffin, was hung up until the lat- 
ter part of March. Then we were ordered up the Ten- 
nessee river to Pittsburg Landing with guns and am- 
munition. After discharging cargo, the ''Fanny" was 
utilized by General Grant, up to the time of the battle 
of Shiloh, as a ferry between Pittsburg Landing and 
headquarters at Savannah, where Mr. White, one of 
my engineers, had two of his fingers shot away by the 
bursting of a rebel shell. During the days that the 
battle of Pittsburg Landing was being fought, and it 
rained bullets, we, under orders and in sight, lay at 

12 



l62 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

the landing sheltered from hostile shot by the protect- 
ing river bank ; and there 

I saw the rank and file of armies vast, 
That muster under one supreme control; 

I heard the trumpet sound the signal blast, 
The calling of the roll. 

At about the time that Albert Sidney Johnston, the 
commander-in-chief of the Confederate forces, met his 
doom in a nearby gully close to our landing, my pilot, 
Barney Seals, who enjoyed a thirst that was a pippin, 
was caught, while drunk, stealing chickens from a coop 
on a neighboring steamer and put in durance vile. I 
did not intercede in his behalf but left him to sweat 
in the guardhouse until we were ordered away and 
the scalawag's services were again needed. Pilots at 
this time were much in demand, and this insured 
Barney, in spite of the incorrigible whisky habit, a 
steady and well-paid job. 

Soon after our return to the mouth of the Ohio, to- 
gether with other transports, and convoyed by United 
States gunboats, we were dispatched into the heart of 
the Confederacy, as far south as the mouth of the 
Yazoo river, just above Vicksburg, where, under a 
flag of truce, an exCiange of prisoners was effected 
with Confederate States Commissioner Oulds. 

During the progress of this long voyage down the 
Mississippi and back, I could not fail to observe the 
complete absence of the life and animation of ante- 
bellum days. The mighty river, under the blighting 
influence of a blockade at both ends, had fallen into a 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 163 

reposeful sleep, which it seemed rude to disturb with 
the reverberating sound of a shrill steam whistle, or 
the sonorous coughing of the engine's escape pipes. 

By the time our mission had been completed, and the 
exchanged boys in blue had been brought back, landed 
and furloughed at Cairo, General Curtis had brought 
his army through Arkansas to the Mississippi river and 
gone into camp near Helena. Quartermasters' stores 
and commissary supplies for his army had accumulated 
in such quantity at Cairo, that the "Fanny's" share of 
them made her fairly stagger and drag the guards in 
the water as I once more turned her head down stream 
towards the shores of Arkansas. 

After arrival at Helena and during a prolonged stay 
there, I spent much time with the staff and line officers 
of Generals Curtis and Osterhaus, some of whom I 
had known in civil life in St. Louis. The attendance 
of these warriors at my first "at home" on board the 
boat, made me think that the Trojan mare "in foal with 
Greeks" had broken loose, and that the thirsty crowd 
had brought with it gullets yards in length and open 
at both ends. 

In the malaria-laden air of the camp in these Arkan- 
sas river bottoms many men fell sick. A goodly num- 
ber of these I was by and by ordered to transport up 
the river to Keokuk, Iowa, where, on high ground in 
healthful surroundings, the government maintained 
large military hospitals. 

During the operations of the Union forces in the 
southwest, steamboats were of great importance on 
the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland 



t64 reminiscences of an indianian 

rivers. While their usefulness was completely para- 
lyzed at the beginning of the war, this large fleet of 
watercraft afterwards became the main factor in the 
transportation of troops and the carrying of ammuni- 
tion, quartermasters' supplies and army stores. The 
"Fanny," one of this fleet, utilized for all sorts of 
service, was frequently sent into out-of-the-way locali- 
ties, where she was exposed to ambuscades from hostile 
batteries and volleys from the enemy's musketry. From 
these dangers we strove to protect ourselves by barri- 
cading the boilers of the boat with hay and cotton 
bales, and by surrounding the pilot house with boiler 
iron ; and, with the exception of slight wounds received 
by two of the crew, we succeeded fairly well in protect- 
ing life and limb. 

My boat had now unremittingly been at work for 
nigh unto two years, during which time, repairing out 
of the question, absolutely nothing had been done to 
offset the heavy abuse and hard knocks she had en- 
dured. Much of the nosing around the guards and out- 
riggers was worn off. The gallows frame supporting 
the starboard wheel, out of plumb, had an ominous 
leaning outward ; and the wheel houses and bulkheads 
full of bullet holes, with the upper works badly dilapi- 
dated, had given her the appearance of a lopsided 
hobo, staggering under a heavy jag. 

Steamboats by this time had again come into de- 
mand, but the "Fanny's" scanty earnings up to then 
were quite insufficient to pay for docking her and 
cover the large expense of giving the boat and machin- 
ery the thorough overhauling they needed. I therefore 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 165 

was glad to find a party who would buy. I consequently 
sold, and the purchaser immediately went to work on 
repairs which, when completed, he found had run up 
to the neat little sum of forty thousand dollars. 

When, after the fall of Vicksburg, I once more saw 
the boat at Cairo, bound from St. Louis to New Or- 
leans, heavily laden with a valuable cargo, there came 
to me the last greeting I should ever receive from her 
decks. It was given in a cheery voice by my friend, 
Tom Tucker, the mate, who wished me "a light heart 
and a heavy purse for evermore." 

The now absolutely stanch condition of the boat 
precluded the thought that this should be her last voy- 
age ; but fate had decreed that it should be so. A hid- 
den snag in the lower river one foggy night on this very 
trip knocked a hole in her hull ; and she, together with 
her valuable cargo, sank to the bottom, where the water 
is nearly a hundred feet deep. This wreck, strange to 
relate, occurred directly opposite the well-known Bullitt 
plantation in the state of Mississippi, which was then 
and is yet owned by the woman after whom the boat 
and her predecessor both were named. 

A good many years ago Louisville parties built a 
steamer for the New Orleans trade and named her the 
"Fanny Smith," in honor of one of the then fashionable 
belles of Kentucky. In due time, when the boat became 
worn, her machinery was transferred to a newly-built 
craft which, for the same stunning leader of gay Blue 
Grass society, who in the meantime had become Mrs. 
Colonel Bullitt, was christened "Fanny Bullitt." 

On reflection it occurs to me as a marvelous coinci- 



l66 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

dence, that this vessel, after having escaped the dangers 
of navigation on a snag-infested river for so many- 
years, as well as the vicissitudes of destructive war, 
should butt out her brains here. And the question sug- 
gests itself, why she should have chosen this particular 
locality, when snags in the ten hundred miles of river 
between the mouth of the Ohio and New Orleans used 
to be as plentiful as leaves in Valambrosa. Could it 
have been affection for her godmother that animated 
the boat on that dark night to hug the bend of the river 
in quest of the mud-imbedded snag, that she might in 
self-destruction find rest with "her own"? Who 
knows ? 

Some years afterward Sol Gilkey, an old steamboat- 
man, told me that for many years he had been well 
acquainted with "one-eyed Wash Johnson," the pilot 
who was at the wheel the night the boat sank. "Wash," 
he said, "had a glass eye, which at times, when its 
owner was Very dry' and out of money, he would 
pawn for whisky. The eye on that particular night 
was missing from its socket. At Memphis, on the way 
down the river, Wash had pawned it for a drink, and 
the inference is that the absent eye, had it been in its 
place, would have enabled the pilot to have given the 
snag a wide berth and saved the steamer." 

Becky Posey, the chambermaid, soon after her rescue 
from the sinking boat, told the mate that when at one 
of the landings she saw a white horse and a preacher 
come aboard, her "fonetic" soul told her that thar 
would be trouble ; and when afterwards she discovered 
that Mars Wash's glass eye was missin' outen his head 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 167 

she know'd that the boat was bound to have bad luck. 
"You can't expec'," she said to the mate, "but what de 
want of dat er eye would make a man lopsided, and 
thar ain't no pilot wat's lopsided can hold no boat round 
no bend, and pint er right down de middle o' de chute, 
whisky er no whisky. No, sah, it was dat glass eye 
that done de whole business," she continued. "Dey 
say dat in New Orleans de oysters shuck off der shells 
and run right over you on de street, but as much as I 
love oysters I don't nebber want to go thar no mo' ; I 
wanter get back to Injiana whar I was bawn, yes sah, 
at home in my lodge whar I is Peramound Princess ob 
de Order of White Doves and de Fishes of Galilee. 
We works for de pervention ob social purity. Dar's 
w'ere my heart is, Mars Tucker. You don't get Becky 
Posey to resk her life no mo' on boats wat's got pilots 
wid glass eyes." 

When foreign tourists and travelers from the East 
failed to agree with our people that the Mississippi 
river steamboats were "magnificent," we used to think 
them prejudiced and unreasonable. Did we not spend 
our money freely to embellish the exterior of the boat 
with fancy scroll sawed and carved ornaments? Did 
we not put gold leaf galore on curlicues and terminals 
in the interior, and paint dainty landscapes in oil on 
the door panels of the state rooms ? Were not the car- 
pets on the floor soft and gay of color and the chan- 
deliers immense in size and gorgeously trapped with 
glittering glass drops? and the bridal chamber, which 
we never failed to show the critical visitor, did it not 
flutter with lace counterpanes and embroidered "shams" 



l68 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

on a couch spacious enough to reassure any timid bride 
fresh from the hands of the reverend executioner? 

The cabin, of great width, extended over the entire 
length of the boat ; and the wide guards which sur- 
rounded the cabin offered Hmitless promenading faciH- 
ties ; while in swinging hammocks and deep armchairs, 
fanned by cooling breezes, luxurious ease was found. 
Where was there anything in travel to surpass this, 
when on the placid summer surface of the Father of 
Waters the boat winged her way through the deep 
hush, between heavily wooded banks, disturbed only 
by the sonorous pulsations of the big engines and their 
echo from the forest wall on shore ? 

The gods have forsaken bright Olympus, and the 
steamboat, once the pride of our great central valley, 
has departed from the shining surface of this great 
highway. The commerce of the Mississippi, a river 
greater by far than the venerable Nile, has been taken 
captive and is held with shackles of steel by the snake- 
like ribbon of the iron horse. Silence and stagnation 
have overcast the face of the mighty stream where erst- 
while bustling life covered its course and enlivened the 
adjacent shores. 

The mutability of human concerns has nowhere been 
more startlingly demonstrated than in the annihilation 
of that rich current of the country's commerce which, 
in untold millions, used to float over its course down to 
the sea. 

The seasons succeed each other in their wonted regu- 
larity; the sluggish catfish and the saurian-descended 
alligator fatten in the mud-laden waters ; but there is 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 169 

no revival of former thrift and prosperity for the 
dwellers on the banks of the great river. 

It were fit that a requiem should be chanted over the 
old leviathan by a modern Torquato Tasso, and its de- 
parted glories be celebrated by the eloquence of a 
Demosthenes. Those of us, the remnant of the crew 
of that proud armada once afloat on the river's bosom, 
now sit under the willows on its deserted banks, while 
in web-footed dreams we linger and wait for the re- 
awakening of the mighty giant, so ignominiously held 
in subjection by the iron horse and flouted by the 
shriek of its unholy whistle. 



ADVENTUROUS TIMES ON THE TENNES- 
SEE RIVER 

One summer's day antedating "the war," I landed 
from an Ohio river steamer, with a detachment of ax- 
men and wood choppers, in the "black bottoms" in 
Egypt (southern Illinois), to establish a stave camp. 
Here oak timber grew in magnificent abundance. Trees, 
tall and straight as altar candles in lofty cathedrals, 
stood in serried ranks, their limbs fairly reaching for 
the clouds. In this insalubrious locality it became neces- 
sary that the commissary supplies from Paducah, a 
town on the opposite shore in Kentucky, should be 
wholesome, but as Mose, my Ethiopian Mouffetish 
caterer and cook, could not read, Brilliat Savarin's di- 
rections and advice on cookery were unknown to him. 
The consequence was that his greasy compounds, to- 
gether with the malaria lurking in the black, mucky 
soil, soon made us all, in spite of quinine in unabbrevi- 
ated doses, sick and unfit for work. The straw which 
served for bedding before long became infested with 
all kinds of creeping monsters, and gallinippers nightly 
carried off such of the crew as had any flesh left on 
their bones and were not encased in football harness. 
By and by it davraed upon me that there was not in my 
original scheme any design to start a graveyard or feed 
the circling buzzards which frequently visited us in 
goodly numbers. 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I7I 

I consequently took my artists up the Tennessee 
river, where, at Belcher's Landing in Kentucky, fifty 
miles from the mouth of the river, on high ground, I 
started another camp more salubrious. Here sanitary 
conditions were much improved and life made more 
endurable; otherwise, however, I was brought to ad- 
mire the wisdom of Casey the Irishman, who, when 
offered a release from purgatory, declined it with the 
retort, "Oi might go farther and fare worse." Had I 
imitated Casey's conservatism and not moved, I should 
have escaped the adventures which so nearly sent me 
to that hot place where Casey feared to go. 

When the time came to ship some of the product of 
our labor to St. Louis there arrived at Belcher's land- 
ing the side-wheel steamer "Meteor," to be loaded with 
staves and other timber for the thriving city on the 
upper Mississippi. The boat was owned and com- 
manded by a redheaded Irishman known as "Riley the 
Wrecker," who had a very long upper lip, and who 
smoked a very short pipe. It was not long after the 
Hues had been made fast that I became aware that 
Riley, drunk as a lord, was seeking for somebody to 
"tread on the tail of his coat." He had on board a St. 
Louis levee gang of Irish toughs, as fine a lot as ever 
scuttled ship or cut a throat. On the trip out from 
St. Louis, Teddy McFadden, the mate, had discovered 
that Riley was "sweet on" the buxom chambermaid 
operating in the after end of the cabin. Teddy was not 
only mate of the steamer but he was also a brother of 
the captain's wife, so, in the interest of domestic felic- 
ity, and for the protection of Mrs. Riley's interest and 



172 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

that of the little Rileys, there existed on board the boat, 
under a momentary modus vivendi, an actual state of 
war. 

After night had spread her mantle over the somber 
forest and shining river, and by the time the thirsty 
crew had well soaked themselves in more booze, the 
fires of controversy became rekindled and began to 
burn fiercely. Teddy, the brother-in-law, unmercifully 
larruped "auld" Riley, the captain, and most beauti- 
fully wiped the deck of the boat with him. This started 
the fun all along the line, so that the silvery little stars 
in the heavens ere long looked down upon as lively and 
joyous a shindy of blood-letting and nose-splitting as 
was ever indulged in on the bogs of Ireland. 

As "looker-on in Vienna," after a time I conceived 
the idea that by waving the olive branch, with the aid 
and assistance of the pilot, the only sober man on 
board, the trouble might be stopped and peace rees- 
tablished. With this laudable desire, when the fun be- 
came fierce, the pilot and I started for the woods to 
where the clans had adjourned. As we passed through 
the underbrush on the way to the battle-ground I fell 
over a log and on top of a drunken tough, who, in the 
dark, lay on the other side of the selfsame log. In 
his sodden surprise, while blowing a breath upon me 
foul, funky and fuliginous, he pounded my head and 
"chawed" me vigorously, and before I could disen- 
tangle myself from his ardent embrace, he had bitten a 
piece out of one ear, and I had badly sprained my 
right wrist in an effort to punch his ill-favored mug. 
This unexpected rencontre put me completely hors de 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I73 

combat, and the pilot and I slunk back to the boat, hav- 
ing had quite enough of peacemaking. 

The river now began to decline, and the boat went 
hard aground on a shelving beach, and as the crew de- 
serted and did not return "auld Riley" and the buxom 
chambermaid were in a pickle. In the meantime I had 
abundant leisure to nurse my skinned knuckles and 
sprained wrist. The neighboring cabin of Aunt Lou 
Freels gave me shelter, and the kind old soul doctored 
and soon restored me to myself with her ointments and 
Indian remedies, including frog oil, roasted out of live 
toads over hot coals done in the dark of the moon, of 
which she alone claimed to have the recipe. The old 
lady also, when coaxed, told fortunes from cofifee 
grounds, and had a never-failing remedy, which 
promptly stopped "any defluxion of rheums that distil 
from the head upon the stomach." 

In due time, and before the "Meteor," which had 
now sprung a leak, could be repaired and pumped out, 
another boat arrived at the landing. Captain Elijah 
Carrol had brought the stern-wheel steamboat "Char- 
ter" from the Cumberland river to take away the ac- 
cumulated stock of timber ready for shipment. Cap- 
tain "Lige" had been recommended as a good and re- 
liable man, and considering my late and disastrous ex- 
perience, I naturally hailed his arrival with delight. 

To enable me to be on hand bright and early for 
work the next morning, I determined to sleep that 
night on board the boat, and turned in early. For want 
of mosquito netting I avoided the open bunks, with 
which the cabin of this primitive craft was furnished, 



174 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

and lay down on the cabin floor, where stood a good- 
sized dining table, covered with a large table-cloth, 
which hung on all sides so low that it reached the floor, 
thus promising protection against the winged blood- 
suckers, which had whetted up for a joyous banquet 
and were assembled in goodly numbers. 

In this almost hermetically sealed enclosure, with the 
temperature of a midsummer's night at a hundred and 
upwards, perspiring at every pore, I sweltered, until 
finally drowsiness overcame worry. 

Somewhere near midnight, my bones aching from 
contact with the bare floor of the cabin, I was startled 
from sleep by a noise, and, on lifting a corner of the 
table-cloth, I saw, by the dim light of the cabin lamp, 
Captain 'Lige, wildly raving, coming up the companion- 
way. He held clutched in one hand a long kitchen 
knife and grasped with the other a carpenter's hand 
ax. With the lumbering step of a drunken man he 
came, as if pursuing some one, on a brisk canter down 
the cabin to where I lay barely awake. Paralyzed 
with sudden fright, and being without pistol or other 
weapon of defense, I felt absolutely helpless. Any at- 
tempt to escape was out of the question. So I did the 
only thing left to do ; in the hope of hiding I dropped 
the curtain of my boudoir and, with bated breath, 
awaited his coming. Fortunately, ignorant of my pres- 
ence under the dining table, he stormed past muttering 
to himself as he went. On reaching the after end of 
the cabin, he examined some of the open bunks ; but 
finding them unoccupied retraced his steps and, at the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I75 

same pace he had come, rushed back toward the for- 
ward end of the boat. All this time 

My heart laid on as if it tried 

To force a passage through my side. 

I held my breath, however, and waiting for the oppor- 
tune moment, suddenly threw out one foot, and with 
the heel of the shoe hit his shin bone a splintering lick, 
which felled him to the floor with a thud. Like a 
rubber ball, I then bounced from my lair, and made for 
on open window at the after end of the cabin, over- 
looking the wheel. Before I could get through the 
window, however, the lunatic had scrambled to his 
feet and followed, and as he saw my legs disappear, 
he hurled the ax after them. Fortunately for me, the 
shot missed its aim and the ax struck a stanchion in 
the rear bulkhead and stuck there. Nimble as a 
squirrel I slid over the wheel and dropped down into 
the river like a ripe plum, and through mud and water 
made my way to shore, where some of the boat's crew 
were huddled together in hiding. 

Here I learned that the captain, though ordinarily a 
sober and peaceful man, at long intervals indulged in 
a "high lonesome," and at these times would become 
possessed of a mania insanely murderous, which on at 
least one occasion previously had brought him uncom- 
fortably close to the gallows. 

When daylight came, the would-be man-slayer was 
found lying on the forecastle of the boat, his head lean- 
ing against the capstan, where he peaceably slept off 



176 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

his drunk. Various emotions, not easy to describe, agi- 
tated my bosom as I looked upon the placid face of the 
man, and involuntarily I conjured up a lively picture 
of the corpse I should have made if the captain's long 
snickersnee had reached my vitals, and how the girl 
who was then destined to be my wife would have had 
no husband and my children no father, and how the 
state of Indiana would have lost what became, later 
on, an orderly, well-behaved and useful citizen. How- 
ever much I have tried with Mrs. Malaprop "to illiter- 
ate the past," I have never since been able to quite for- 
get the horrible gleam of that long butcher knife and 
the maniac's wild ravings. 



MUTINY ON AN OHIO RIVER STEAMBOAT 

'The early village cock had thrice done salutation to 
the morn" when we rounded the point above Golconda. 
This little town lies picturesquely on the right bank of 
the Ohio, eighty miles above the mouth of the river, in 
that part of Illinois known as Egypt. It is a village 
like others of its class. It has a wharfboat, where 
steamers land to load and unload freight and passen- 
gers, half a dozen stores, an Odd Fellows' Hall, band- 
stand, and several saloons where bad whisky is sold 
and old sledge and poker are en regie. It is just like 
any other river town, but its situation is so peculiarly 
cozy as it nestles between two lofty hills, which, from 
an altitude of several hundred feet, run their spurs to 
the very margin of the water, that during the leafy 
season of the year the sentimental traveler passing this 
way is favorably attracted to the place and its pictur- 
esque surroundings. 

In the sixties and seventies, when the E., P. & C. 
Packet Company was running daily mail boats past 
there from Evansville to Cairo, I, as superintendent of 
the line, had warm friends among the congenial deni- 
zens of the place. An occasional visit with them always 
proved inviting and agreeable. 

The high crests of the twin hills had for a number 
of years been occupied as favorite locations for health- 
ful and airy homes. In the sixties the hill farthest 
13 



178 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

south, with its villa, was owned and inhabited by a 
Mr. Koch and his family. This Mr. Koch reminded 
me very much of one of Riley's sweet, venerable char- 
acters, 

Herr Weiser! Three-score-years-and-ten, — 

A hale white rose of his countrymen, 

As blossomy and as pure and sweet 

As the cool green glen of his calm retreat. 

While the prayerful master's knees are set 
In beds of pansy and mignonette, 
And lily and aster and columbine. 
Offered in love, as yours and mine. 

Yes, this description of the poet fitted very closely my 
silver-haired old friend who, a native of Dresden, had 
here in his declining years surrounded himself with 
flowers, fruits and vines of the choicest sorts, and in 
elegant ease followed scientific and literary pursuits 
in quiet contentment. From his library window on 
high he surveyed the town beneath and a goodly stretch 
of the shining surface of la belle riviere as well. The 
procession of steamers coming and going, belching 
forth clouds of black smoke and fleecy white steam 
into a sky of Italian azure, made a fine panorama; 
while the blowing of deep-chested whistles and ring- 
ing of clear-throated bells furnished music for the 
pageant. 

In full view immediately below, and near the Ken- 
tucky shore, lies Golconda Island. Its blue grass mea- 
dows are studded with grazing cattle, and Captain 
Northern's white residence, with its broad southern 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 1 79 

veranda, to this day gleams in the center and peeps in- 
vitingly out from the surrounding grove of black lo- 
cust trees. 

Beyond this the vista fades away over an open, culti- 
vated and level country in the state of Kentucky, where 
fine horses are bred and the woods are full of colonels ! 
The other promontory just above the town, also topped 
off by a fine residence, was then owned by a former 
citizen of Louisville, wealthy, retired from business, 
and enjoying his otium cum dignitate. 

Both hills are heavily wooded ; the green mantle of 
the foliage on their long slopes is broken only where 
the turning of the winding footpath makes a nick in 
its soft and velvety surface. Here in spring the snowy- 
white blossoms of the dogwood and the purple flowers 
of the redbud, lend greater glory to the bright hue of 
the juicy green. It would be difficult to find a more 
romantic site on the shores of the Hudson or the 
banks of historic Father Rhine than this sylvan spot 
in unromantic "Egypt." Legendary lore, which adds 
charm to attractive localities, has found lodgment here 
also. This neighborhood, as well as the Catskills, the 
Adirondacks and other mountainous districts, has its 
traditions. 

It was among these hills that once upon a time a 
great Manitou kept watch over and guarded the In- 
dians of his tribe. He appeared in the guise of a 
monstrous bear. When in an amiable mood he would 
scatter wampum among them from the top of one of 
these knobs in great abundance, but when angry or 
displeased with their checaudum, or want of it, would 



l8o REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Strike them down with giant paws, crunch their bones 
between his formidable jaws, and destroy the bravest 
warriors of the tribe. This was long before the fire- 
water of the white man had debased the redskins, and 
previous to the time when westward the jug of empire 
had taken its way. By and by a medicine man with 
great mystic powers came from the north and caught 
the monster "napping," and with his charms and his 
philters overcame and killed him. Then, when the 
giant carcass had been cut up into small bits and scat- 
tered to the four winds, every one of the pieces grew 
into a black bear, numbers of which, down to the days 
of the earliest settlements, furnished sport and game to 
the pioneers of the country. 

It was at Golconda, one morning in March, 1864, 
while in command of the steamer "Courier," that, in 
pursuit of my duties as captain of the boat and cus- 
todian of the lives of numerous passengers and crew, 
it fell to my lot to face an unusually serious situation, 
which might have terminated fatally for myself and 
disastrously for others, but which, thanks to the aid of 
a navy six-shooter and a little "sand in the craw," 
ended all right. 

The hour was quite early, and most of the passengers 
were yet in their staterooms. We had made the regu- 
lar mail landing and were preparing to resume the 
journey down stream when, in the gray morning light 
there came from the town, down the river bank to- 
ward the boat, a string of fifteen soldiers. They were 
our own boys in blue. Dirty and bedraggled, they 
staggered as they filed by. When they passed me near 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN l8l 

the gangway I saw that they were in a beastly condi- 
tion of drunkenness. Heeding orders from the mili- 
tary authorities I dared not refuse them admission to 
the boat, as during the days of "the unpleasantness" 
strict orders from the war department at Washington 
were to give transportation to all soldiers on furlough 
coming from or returning to their commands. 

A first lieutenant, who had previously come aboard, 
stepped up to tell me that he had lost all control over 
the men and that he feared they would make trouble 
aboard. I noticed that a number of them were pock- 
marked and others had red hair, which, among river 
deck crews is believed to bode bad luck to the boat, 
the same as to have on board at once a preacher and a 
white mare. The men appeared thoroughly brutal- 
ized, and were soaked through and through with 
whisky of the most quarrelsome quality. They had 
been drinking all night, cleaned out the town, and had 
demolished every saloon in it. On closely following 
them across the landing stage I stopped the squad from 
going up on boiler deck and into the cabin, already 
well filled with passengers, and directed them to stay 
below on the main deck, to which order they sullenly 
and grumblingly submitted. Instead of proceeding to 
the warm and sheltered engine room aft, they insisted 
on remaining forward, and squatted down in the coal 
bunkers before the fire doors, right in the way of the 
negro firemen. 

When I left for the hurricane deck to back out the 
boat, they were getting ready to play cards. While 
laying the boat in her course, head down stream, the 



l82 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

signal having just been given to come ahead on both 
wheels, I was startled by a loud tap on the big bell, 
alongside of which I was standing. Then a hail from 
the pilot informed me that a bloody riot was in prog- 
ress on the lower deck. In anticipation of trouble I 
had previously buckled on a long navy revolver, such 
a one as during the days of the war everybody was pro- 
vided with. 

Taking the weapon in my right hand I quickly 
rushed down the companionway, landed among the 
rioters suddenly, and startled them by my abrupt ap- 
pearance. Upon this coup I had counted and was not 
disappointed in its effect upon the liquor-crazed crowd. 
Up to that moment they had been faced by the mate 
and engineer only, who were armed with nothing more 
formidable than clubs. The sight of a dead fireman 
lying in a pool of blood with skull crushed and brain 
scattered over lumps of coal drove the blood back to 
my heart. 

Stunned for the moment, I quickly perceived, how- 
ever, that irresolution in an emergency like this would 
certainly bring dangerous consequences to the safety 
of every one on board, and when a quick glance in- 
formed me of a suspicious movement of the right hand 
toward his pistol belt of one of the soldiers nearest me, 
I instantly, while pointing my six-shooter at his breast, 
ordered "Hands up." Grim determination in the ex- 
pression of my eye and tone of voice, for I had clearly 
and calmly agreed with myself to enforce my author- 
ity or die in the attempt, happily convinced him and 
his comrades that it would be best to obey orders. I 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 183 

then, in my deepest basso prof undo (as we would say 
in Italian), gave the command, "About face, march!" 
and the entire squad, like whipped curs, climbed with 
halting and unsteady tread ahead of me up the com- 
panionway. And when they showed a disposition to 
tarry on boiler deck and began to cast wistful glances 
toward the bar with its gleaming and tempting bottles 
of red liquor, I had to crowd vigorously to land them 
on the hurricane deck above. 

Here I remained with them, not daring to relax vigi- 
lance for an instant. While carelessly toying with my 
gun, I held up to them the enormity of their crime and 
the baneful effects of excessive drink upon soldiers 
fighting for their country. Thus gradually sobering 
up, and quieting down, they were held and entertained 
until we reached the mouth of the Cumberland river, 
eighteen miles below, where I turned them over to a 
provost guard of my friend Colonel Butterfield, then 
commandant of the post at Smithland; and there we 
buried the remains of the murdered fireman. 

Had I at any time flinched or shirked my duty it 
might have gone hard with us all. Drunken men, at 
best, are careless of life and consequences. Most of 
them were desperate fellows, men hardened on the 
battlefield and in camp; they were devoid of all sense 
of moral responsibility, and bore the stamp of brutish- 
ness upon their faces. 

The hot-water hose, always useful in emergencies of 
this sort, had, for want of a proper coupling, failed at 
the critical moment to come to the relief of my single 
pistol, and I lost the help of its scalding and hair-rais- 



184 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

ing efficiency, which, at close quarters, outranks the 
Catling gun, and, by its hellish potency, is the terror 
of mutineers and rioters. 

Not until I had dismissed the squad with my bless- 
ing and saw them securely under guard, marching up 
the river bank at Smithland, did I fully realize the 
seriousness of that picnic ; and it took a good big yorum 
of Old Crow to retie the frayed ends of my nerves to 
their normal anchorage and ship up the disjointed links 
of my wabbling backbone. I was thankful for always 
afterward that the aforesaid backbone didn't wabble 
when there was need that it should hold itself steady 
and erect. 



FORDING THE OHIO ON A LOG 

In the summer of 1859, while operating a timber 
camp at Belcher's Landing on the banks of the Tennes- 
see river in Kentucky, I had with me as principal 
Bimbashi and general factotum, Squire John Car- 
michael, of Massac county, Illinois, a man past the 
meridian of life. Fat, florid and facetious, the squire 
was delightfully genial and full of quaint humor and 
conceits. Conscious of his own wit, he, like Jack Fal- 
staff, could truthfully say that he was the cause that 
wit was in other men. The Ettrick Shepherd's invita- 
tion in Noctes Ambrosiana, to "tack a mouthfu' out of 
the jug to moderate the intensity of the pure water," 
extended to the squire, would never have been de- 
cHned as long as there had remained a drop in the jug. 

Carmichael lived at Metropolis, Illinois, a town on 
the lower Ohio, twelve miles below Paducah ; and as 
I had business relations in that town, he and I, now 
and then on Sundays, would get away together from 
the Tennessee river stave camp and pay a visit to the 
Squire's lares and penates. 

The steamer, which on a certain Saturday afternoon 
had brought us out of the Tennessee, terminated her 
trip at Paducah, and as there was no down-stream 
boat in port and none expected from above, old John 
and I determined to walk the twelve miles and swim 



l86 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

the Ohio, so that we might spend our Sunday in IIH- 
nois. 

The afternoon was sultry, and the rays of the sun 
stung Hke fiery darts. Our way down the river bank, 
along the Kentucky shore, through burning trackless 
sand, lay over logs and driftwood. After a while 
heavy clouds obscured the sun and somewhat tempered 
the heat. By three o'clock a big shower of rain de- 
scended, and lightning and the heavy peals of thunder 
became so appalling that we were driven to shelter 
under the bow of a stranded scow. From this retreat 
we emerged after the rain, covered by countless fleas, 
which had been bred by the hogs that inhabited this 
sand lair. The shirt of Nessus which Hercules gave 
to the Centaur would have been soothing compared 
to the bites of these little black devils ; and I thought 
of the French proverb which says : "Lorsqu'on se 
coiiche avec les Mens, on se leve avec des puces:' 
Salt on their tails would have done no good, as there 
could not have been found enough salt to go around. 
In my exasperation I jumped into the river, clothes 
and all, and the squire followed. "May my right 
hand cleave to the roof of my mouth," if for a little 
way the surface of the water wasn't black with fleas. 
Uncle John Bradshaw's theory was that if sheep be 
driven into a flea-infested barn the result of the contest 
will be that the sheep will drive the fleas out, but I 
am convinced that in a struggle with these particular 
fleas the sheep would have been the vanquished. Any- 
way fleas are much underrated animals. If fleas 
were to grow to the size of sheep, and the power of 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 187 

their hind legs increased in the same proportion, they 
would be able to jump to the height of a ten-story 
skyscraper. What would a sheep, which can not ele- 
vate itself high enough to clear a six-rail fence, do with 
such an adversary in a contest ? 

After we had arisen from our bath the sky again 
cleared. While preparing to resume the tramp we 
fortunately found imbedded in the sand a long piece 
of dry timber which once upon a time had been part 
of a barge or flatboat. When dug out and launched 
we were rejoiced to find its buoyancy sufficient to carry 
our combined weight. This gave assurance that the 
laborious tramp through loose and hot sand had come 
to an end, and that the rest of the journey could be 
made by water and the crossing of the river be easily 
accomplished in the same way. 

The sun was then several hours high, and before 
we embarked to hire some men for my Tennessee river 
camp, I walked through the woods over to a cabin 
about a mile distant from the margin of the river. As 
I knew my companion's happy-go-lucky and careless 
ways, and was cocksure that during my absence he 
would be tempted to go to sleep, I issued explicit in- 
structions before leaving to keep a sharp lookout on 
our newly acquired argosy, for its loss might mean no 
supper and a sleepless night among the coons and 
'possums of the Kentucky river bottoms. On my re- 
turn to the river bank I found that, as anticipated, 
sweet slumber had overcome the old Satyr. He lay 
at full length on top of a log fast asleep, while the sun 



ISO REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

with ardor splintered up his rays on the Bardolphian 
nose of the sleeper. 

The "gunwale," washed out from the shore by the 
waves of an ascending steamer, meanwhile was float- 
ing down stream on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. 
Mad as a hornet at this discovery, I uttered a frantic 
yell and then threw myself full force upon the startled 
squire, who, dazed and surprised, instantly plunged 
headforemost into the water. He swam like a duck, 
and soon reached the piece of timber. As he slowly 
pulled his fat body to the top of the float, a triumphant 
and happy smile mantled his vermilion-hued cheek. 
And while proudly he paddled himself to shore, the 
folds of his red flannel shirt bosom, full of hot benevo- 
lence, gaped wide, as if to invite the whole world fra- 
ternally to the sanctuary of its innermost recesses. 

The river here is a mile wide and very deep, and as 
we two, with legs hanging in the water, sat astraddle 
of our log, it required a cool-headed balance and much 
laborious paddling to accomplish the crossing. Twice 
during the trip were we washed overboard by the 
waves of passing steamers, and it was late in the night 
when we emerged from the water and landed on the 
shores of "Egypt," as did Menelaus in his search for 
Ulysses. Thus, like Helen's husband, we escaped the 
Sirens and the evil-smelling, web-footed sea-horse and 
proved Homer's immortal epic. 

Thoroughly exhausted by the labor and peril of the 
day, Alcinoos and I that night slept the profound sleep 
which brings oblivion and "knits up the ravelled sleeve 
of care." 



A WAR REMINISCENCE 

How THE Kentucky Colonels Failed to Capture 
AN Ohio River Steamboat 

When, at the breaking out of the civil war during 
the summer of 1861, steamboating on the Ohio had 
been almost completely abandoned, Captain Dexter, 
with the stern-wheeler ''Charley Bowen," a well- 
groomed, trim and speedy little craft, which, while 
champing on her bit could show clean heels to any boat 
of her size and capacity on the river, continued to make 
regular bi-weekly trips covering the lower two hundred 
miles of the Ohio between Evansville and Cairo. 

The shores of the river along this part of south- 
western Kentucky were, at that time, debatable ground 
and largely dominated over by the fire-eating element 
of that much disturbed state. 

My boat, the 'Tanny Bullitt," a Louisville and New 
Orleans side-wheeler, like all other Mississippi river 
craft had, by the closing of the river at Columbus, 
Island No. 10 and Vicksburg, been put out of commis- 
sion and was tied up at Portland, the Louisville harbor 
just below the Falls of the Ohio. I was thus idle, but 
being desirous to keep in touch with developments 
along the border, I volunteered to join Dexter by taking 
charge of the office of the "Bowen." 

Henry T. Dexter, like most river men, was fond 



igO REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

of a game of poker, but never touched drink. He 
would forgive his enemies, but not until after they 
had been hanged. He was a fearless champion of the 
flag, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Union, 

Who never bowed his stubborn knee. 
And least of all to chivalry. 

He believed with King Richard the Third, when on 
Bosworth field he says to my Lord of Norfolk : 

We must have knocks ; ha ! must we not ? 

Business under the then disturbed conditions was 
not such as to justify employing an assistant or second 
clerk in the office of the boat. Short-distance landings 
meant watchfulness and continuous and unrelenting 
work by day and night, and left me but little time for 
sleep. It proved an exhausting task, but I worried 
through, and, by so doing, made a good friend of "the 
old man," as the commanding officer, whether young 
or old, is always called. 

At Uniontown, Caseyville, Carsville and landings 
below, the mails, on account of the presence of guer- 
rilla bands and small detachments of Confederate sol- 
diers, frequently could not be landed and had to be 
carried past. Dexter was known and hated by the 
sympathizers with the cause of the South all along 
the southern shores of the river, as, an outspoken and 
fearless Union man that he was, he kept the stars and 
stripes flying at the jackstaff and defended them, risk- 
ing the loss of his boat, or his life if need be. 

One morning early, when the "Bowen" was down 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN IQI 

stream bound, we were surprised to find anchored at 
the mouth of the Cumberland and near Stewart's Is- 
land, several large steamers which had been dispatched 
south for government hospital service. The captains 
of these boats, being without gunboat convoy or other 
military protection, feared to proceed, for they had in- 
formation of a large hostile force at Paducah (ten 
miles below), and a battery of rebel guns controlling 
the river at that point. 

This news aroused "the old man" instantly. As if 
sniffing the battle from afar, he forthwith, and while 
softly whistling, "Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, 
get your gun," began to busy himself making prepara- 
tions and setting things to rights. 

As the boat continued on her trip, the four-pounder 
cannon on our forecastle, loaded with slugs, was moved 
into place and the match lighted; the small arms, 
which we had obtained on a requisition from a mili- 
tary company at Evansville, were loaded and distrib- 
uted among the crew ; the hot water hose was bent 
on and connected to the boilers and the flag nailed to 
the jackstaff. 

On approaching Paducah, from the upper deck of 
the boat we became aware that the landing was densely 
packed with an excited and turbulent mob. Nothing 
daunted, however, the "Bowen" held her course in the 
broad expanse of the wide, deep river to a point op- 
posite the crowd on the wharf; then, upon a signal 
from the captain, her head, in a graceful circle, was 
swung up stream by the man at the wheel, and we 
began slowly to flank into shore. At this moment 



192 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Dexter began to doubt the wisdom of giving the serv- 
ing of the cannon on the forecastle out of his own 
hands and trust the control of it to others; he there- 
fore determined not to leave the main deck, but ordered 
me aloft to the command of the boat, to make the land- 
ing. When, from the hurricane deck as we neared 
the shore, I looked down upon that surging and super- 
heated rabble, I keenly appreciated that in my exposed 
place as an easy mark for a shot from shore I ranked 
every one on board. I accordingly felt proud of my 
position, but, I must confess, just a little bit fluffy. 

As the "Bowen" slowly approached the wharfboat, 
which was covered from end to end by a surging, ex- 
cited and armed mob, I recognized among them men 
well known to us as fire-eating haters of the stars and 
stripes, desperate and determined. Shouts went up 
demanding that the flag be lowered and the boat sur- 
rendered, but the plainly visible and murderous prep- 
arations on our part held the shouters in check and 
kept them from boarding us. As we touched the land- 
ing three or four of the leaders came forward to the 
edge of the wharfboat and made a demand upon Cap- 
tain Dexter to lower the flag and surrender his boat. 
He, leaning against the capstan, retorted: "Not as 
long as I have one shot left," and then coolly pointed 
to the little cannon on the forecastle, the man with the 
burning fuse and the shining brass nozzle of death- 
dealing, hot-water hose in the hands of Baker, the 
engineer, and, raising his hand toward the flag at the 
jackstaif, shouted: ''Lower it, if you dare!" While 
the parley was going on, to guard against a sudden 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I93 

rush of the mob, I had carefully kept the steamer in 
such a position that her nose barely touched the lower 
corner of the wharfboat, and when the word came up 
that the mail had been delivered and was safely in 
the hands of the United States mail agent, our purpose 
had been accomplished. We had, in the face of the 
enemy, landed the mail, and, in defiance of its threats, 
had kept the flag flying. 

Instead of the usual command to "Let go," I sang 
out to the man who "stood by" with a sharp ax, "Cut 
the line." The twang and swish of it, as under the 
strain it rebounded, made welcome music in our ears, 
and when I ordered the pilot to put on all steam and 
"back her hard," and he passed the word down to the 
engine room, the throttle flew wide open and the nimble 
little craft shot out into the middle of the stream back- 
ward. She kept her head to the enemy and I was care- 
ful not to expose her flank until out of range of a pos- 
sible fusillade from the baffled mob on shore. 

The war feeling and hatred for the Union flag and 
its defenders, at the time of the outbreak of the rebel- 
lion, ran high in southwestern Kentucky. A detach- 
ment of Union soldiers from Cairo, 111., on a raid 
into that state, had shortly before captured and confis- 
cated a steamer owned by Southern sympathizers in 
Paducah, which was openly engaged in contraband 
traffic through the lines up the Tennessee river. This 
had exasperated the colonels, and the attack upon the 
"Bowen" that day was in reprisal for the loss of their 
boat, and in revenge upon the hated "Yankees," but 
the project failed. By thorough preparation and stout- 
14 



194 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

hearted defiance we successfully thwarted their design. 
It was lucky for them that they did not fire on us ; a 
single shot from shore would have let loose our cannon, 
musketry and hot-water batteries, and we might have 
committed much slaughter on the dense crowd, num- 
bering several thousand men, packed close as they were 
on the wharf of the little city that day. We were ever 
after thankful that the affair had passed off without 
loss of life; for after the close of the war we again 
entered into friendly relations with these people, and 
some who were participants in the affair described be- 
came stockholders in and officers of our corporation, 
which, in the meantime, had increased to a daily mail 
line, maintaining a number of fast and elegant side- 
wheel steamers and doing a prosperous and profitable 
business. 



THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN OF FIFTY-SIX 
IN A DEMOCRATIC NEIGHBORHOOD 

The excitement incident to the Fremont campaign 
in 1856, and the strife, with its wadike alarums, at- 
tending the formation of a new political party, appealed 
strongly to those of us who were then young and en- 
thusiastic. 

When, in October of that year, one of my friends, 
a disciple of Coke and Blackstone, determined to do 
some missionary and crusading work in the "out 
counties," I made up my mind to accompany him on a 
trip into Warrick, Spencer and Dubois, then the dark- 
est part of the Soudan of democracy in Indiana. 

At that time I was bookkeeper and teller in the Canal 
Bank of Evansville, one of the "free" or so-called 
"wildcat" monetary institutions of our state. The 
directors of the bank, former whigs, had, with the Le- 
compton and Bleeding Kansas troubles, drifted on the 
current into the newly formed republican party, and in 
their zeal for "free soil" and its success, wilHngly 
granted a vacation. 

My friend and I, provided with a wheezy old horse 
and the buggy stuffed full of anti-slavery tracts and 
free-soil literature, buoyantly made our start on this 
trip of knight errantry into the enemy's country. At 



196 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Boonville, Rockport, Ferdinand and other points in 
the then first congressional district, we met with but 
sorry success. The democratic dervishes, even through 
the back door of their understanding, could not be 
reached. Expounding to them the gospel of "free soil" 
threw them into fits, and maddened them as the red 
rag does the bull. No eggs, we learned, were too old 
for the anointing of black republicans and abolition- 
ists. Slavery was yet looked upon as a God-given in- 
stitution, supported by the pulpit and authorized by the 
Bible. 

When we reached Jasper, county seat of Dubois, 
where we had an appointment by "early candle-light," 
we found the rostrum in the court-room occupied by 
the democratic candidate for congress, holding spell- 
bound a goodly crowd of the "unterrified." One ban- 
ner among the decorations of the room, conspicuously 
surrounded by young ladies in white, bore in fat letters 
the devise, "Fathers, save us from nigger husbands !" 
The atmosphere within we found surcharged with pro^ 
test and hostility. The heated pulpiteer "chopped 
logic," and by innuendo and open attacks damned all 
abolitionists and Yankee nigger-stealers, until it be- 
came apparent that it would not be long ere in that 
perspiring, superheated crowd "something would be 
doing." Presently, in response to an especial and per- 
sonally insulting lambasting from the rostrum, my 
nervous companion, in a challenging manner, sprang 
to his feet to hurl back the lie. Then, with a thud, a 
big onion struck him between the eyes, while the juice 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I97 

of an aged egg trickled down his nose upon his mus- 
tache, whereupon, 

He smole a sickly smile 

As he lay upon the floor, 
And the subsequent proceedings 

Interested him no more. 

In the meantime I also had received my share of 
shots from the basket of foul and funky hen fruit, and 
while the speaker in his arduous ranting had burst both 
suspenders, the crowd was in a hilarious tumult, from 
which we were thankful to escape without additional 
chromos. On reaching the security of a chamber under 
the clapboard roof of the Waldorf Astoria of the place, 
it occurred to me that the banister of the stairs to fame 
is full of splinters, and "he who slides down the said 
banister will be filled with much tribulation and great 
pain." 

On our arrival next day at Huntingburg, where we 
were billed for a daylight meeting, we found a big 
crowd assembled — such a one as usually attends a 
lynching. We were advised to keep shady, but the 
spirit of the crusader was within and gave us no rest. 

Having hurried through a dinner of jowl and greens 
we sallied forth toward the school-house yard, where, 
from the top of a dry-goods box, the speaking was to 
take place. The rostrum, however, had already been 
usurped by a man with a moth-eaten beard whom the 
crowd greeted as "Old Cheezum," and who at fever 
heat "pointed with pride and viewed with alarm." This 
old linsey-woolsey impostor, we afterwards learned, lay 



198 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

claim to being an astrologer and a fortune-teller, and 
pretended to know 

When the moon's in fittest mood 
For cutting corns, or letting blood ; 
When for anointing scabs and itches, 
Or to the back applying leeches ; 
When sows or bitches may be spay'd. 
And in what time best cider's made. 
Whether the wane be, or increase, 
Best to set garlic or sow peas. 

It was not until after his vocabulary had been ex- 
hausted, and he had viciously basted us and our nigger- 
loving party, that he gave way to repeated protests 
from us and yielded the floor. 

I had hardly unpacked the documents and mounted 
the box to announce that I could not, but that the 
gentleman in the white necktie could and would make 
them a speech, such a speech as had not been heard 
from the days of Cicero to Mirabeau, and which would 
throw Daniel Webster into a jaundice of yellow envy, 
when a suspicious commotion in the outer edge of the 
crowd made itself known. A fellow from behind the 
school-house, tricked out like a clown, led into the 
thickest part of the crowd, right up to the store box 
on which I was standing, a mule, whose hair, stiff with 
tar, was all standing on end. This the clown an- 
nounced to be Fremont's "woolly horse." The crowd, 
like a newly-opened gas well, now became uncon- 
trollable, and when some one tickled the mule under 
the tail, his first kick knocked the rostrum out from 
under my feet and sent me like a rocket flying head 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN I99 

foremost into the boisterously delighted and uproarious 
pack. From the melee which followed we were glad 
to disentangle ourselves and, sans political tracts or re- 
publican platform, we hastily rang the bell and trans- 
ferred to another car. 

After supper, nothing daunted, we determined, not- 
withstanding the discouraging outlook, to make an- 
other attempt at preaching the gospel of freedom and 
equal rights to the democratic heathen. The school- 
house had been lighted for us with two tallow dips, 
which produced a brilliant illumination. The hilarity 
and frolic of the afternoon had started the unterrified 
to drinking, and some of the younger fellows especially 
had shipped up enough booze to put them in an ugly 
fighting temper. In this state of mind they had re- 
solved to have a little additional fun with the two nig- 
ger-stealers from the seaport on the Ohio, and had 
armed themselves with clubs, ax-handles and corn- 
knives. 

My oratorical companion, who had thus far not 
found an opportunity to unload any of his eloquence, 
had no sooner begun with a promising preamble than 
the door flew open with a bang, disclosing to sight a 
detachment of boys, closely followed by the main "ax- 
handle brigade," a drunken rabble of men. While 
antiquated eggs in one's hair and whiskers are not al- 
together pleasant, and contact with the heels of a kick- 
ing mule is undesirable, the possibility of having one's 
throat cut with gleaming corn-knives or brains scat- 
tered in a cornfield by ax-handles, could not be consid- 
ered with equanimity. Therefore, unostentatiously 



200 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

abandoning hats, collars and neckties, and without 
ceremony, we tumbled out of the back window of the 
school-house into a potato patch. 

Then commenced a lively race through cornfields and 
over stake and ridered fences, we leading and the rab- 
ble chasing like a swift pack in hot cry. We, however, 
fleeter of foot, outwinded them, and eventually ran to 
cover in a widow's house, whose door happened to be 
open. Mother Blemker, the charitable old lady, prompt- 
ly tumbled us on to her couch, threw a feather-bed on 
top, locked the door and put out the light. 

The next morning we bestirred ourselves uncom- 
monly early, fished both the hind wheels of our buggy 
out of the mill pond, hitched up the Rosinante, and 
without hats, and stomachs empty, but noddles well 
filled with experience, we left for home. On parting 
with Mother Blemker she bade us forgive our perse- 
cutors. Therefore, not to appear ungrateful for the 
protection the good soul had so hospitably given us, 
we assented, but only with the mental reservation that 
we would not forgive them until after they were 
hanged ! Cervantes' Knight de la Mancha in his fight 
with the wind-mills was badly worsted, and so were we. 
With grumbling gizzards, the hind wheels of the vehicle 
hamstrung, minus hats, neckties and collars, a buggy- 
rug and a whip gone, we hobbled along over a rocky 
road with gratifying emotions of no common descrip- 
tion, and with Ralpho soliloquized : 

If he that in the field is slain 
Be in the bed of honor lain, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 201 

He that is beaten may be said 
To lie in honor's trundle-bed. 

The autumn coloring of the forest that season, green, 
intermingled with all the shades of Roman gold, ruby 
and burnished brass, was unusually brilliant, and the 
gorgeous panorama presented from elevated points 
along the way was so entrancingly beautiful that youth- 
ful buoyancy returned ere long, and a clearer view 
showed us the ridiculously quixotic situation of our 
past experience in a new light and afforded much 
amusement the rest of the way home. We, like the 
King of France with forty thousand men, had 
"marched up the hill just to march down again." 

A month later election returns from Dubois brought 
proof that our raid in the interest of the Pathfinder had 
been absolutely without result. Not half a dozen votes 
from that county were returned for free soil and "the 
woolly horse." 

To us two crusaders nothing gratifying was left but 
the satisfaction of having bearded the lion in his den 
and the discovery of the wisdom of ^sop, when in his 
fable of "The Dogs and the Hides," he points the 
moral: "Never attempt impossibilities." 



SHERIFF AND A RIOT 

One Saturday night during the campaign of 1880 
the democrats and republicans of Evansville turned out 
at the same hour in separate torchlight processions. 
At the windup a shooting scrape occurred between a 
Kentucky democrat and a colored man. The Kentuck- 
ian, badly wounded, was cared for by friends, while 
the darky, with a bullet in his head, was taken to the 
lockup by the city police. 

By midnight a howling mob of "law-abiding Amer- 
ican citizens" had gathered to hang "the nigger." At 
two o'clock in the morning the chief of police came to 
the jail, where, as sheriff of Vanderburg county, I had 
my residence, and asked that for safety's sake I take 
the prisoner off his hands, and as the wounded darky 
feared the threats of the mob, and begged for protec- 
tion from a republican official and the strong walls of 
the county jail, I complied with the request without 
waiting for a command from court. After obtaining 
from the chief a squad of the city force to assist me 
during the remainder of the night, I sent for Mr. Kel- 
ler, proprietor of a nearby gun store, and provided my- 
self with a stock of guns and ammunition. 

By this time the court-house and jail were sur- 
rounded by a large and noisy crowd who, in their 
blind frenzy, threatened to storm the jail and take the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 203 

prisoner from me. I therefore deemed it advisable to 
remove my family to a place of safety up town, in 
which undertaking I was aided by friends who had left 
their beds to come to my aid. 

When, after hours of anxious vigil, daylight came 
and the judges of the two courts and mayor of the city 
had appeared on the scene, we, with the cooperation 
of many influential and peace-loving citizens, labored 
hard with the mob, counseling peace and submission 
to the law. But it was all in vain ; the leaders wanted 
a hanging and they would have it. 

With the crowd increasing and becoming more de- 
termined I now began to prepare for enforcing the 
law by assembling a posse comitatus. I swore in fifty 
prominent citizens, who readily responded and put 
themselves under my command. A number of them 
were members of the bar and stanch and courageous 
men, who stood ready to help avert a calamity which 
would have proven a disgraceful blot on the fair fame 
of the city and state. 

As the day advanced reliable information reached 
me that there was on the road a large company of men 
on horseback from Mt. Vernon, Posey county, where 
the previous year a mob had hung five negroes on the 
same tree. They were cutting the wires as they ad- 
vanced, and the outlook became promising for a hang- 
ing or a killing in good earnest. 

While I busied myself with the strategic distribution 
and direction of my forces I spied a Mr. Peelar in his 
buggy coming around the court-house corner behind a 
trotter of great speed. No sooner did he come in sight 



204 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

than it occurred to me that here was a possible means 
of escape out of the dilemma of threatened war. 

Major Mattison, a brave veteran, who, when a pris- 
oner of war in the Confederacy, had tunneled out of 
Libby Prison, and who had, through the night and 
morning hours, given stanch and valuable support as 
my main lieutenant, followed as I bolted through the 
crowd. At a wink to Peelar he drove out of hearing of 
the mob into another street, where I made a demand on 
him for his rig. Not, however, until I gave him my 
personal guarantee of a thousand dollars, in case of loss 
or damage to the outfit, did he surrender. In an ad- 
joining alley, and out of sight of the crowd, the major 
at once mounted the vehicle, while with the help of 
the jailor I slipped the prisoner through the sheltering 
gloom of a narrow cross-alley to the waiting buggy. 
When they were both aboard, and the darky's head 
and person well covered up by an apron and large 
splash leather, the major drove at full speed through 
alleys and cross-streets out of town, and by country 
roads reached a flag station on the E. & T. H. R. R. 
Then with the negro he boarded the north-going train 
for Terre Haute, just due, and at the latter named city, 
one hundred miles removed from the "dead line," he 
turned the prisoner over to the sheriff of Vigo county. 

As soon as I knew my bird was fairly out of reach of 
the mob I went among the crowd and announced that 
the African had safely escaped their clutches; and to 
convince them of the truth of my statement, I invited 
three of their number to accompany me into the jail. 
When satisfied that the game had flown they announced 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 205 

it on the outside, and the crowd cursed the sheriff long 
and deep, and grumbhngly dispersed. 

The mulatto (not a negro, but nearly white), whose 
name was Oscar Shorter, carried in his skull, to the 
day of his death long years afterward, the bullet re- 
ceived from the white man's pistol that night; while 
the Kentuckian, who at the time of the shooting was 
supposed to have been mortally wounded, recovered his 
health in a short time. 

Had I failed in my duty on that occasion the city 
of Evansville, together with the state, would have been 
disgraced by the commission of a dastardly murder; 
doubly damnable, as the mulatto, by subsequent confes- 
sion of the Kentuckian, was shown to have shot in 
self-defense only, after an unprovoked attack from the 
young Hotspur. 

This same man Shorter had always been known as 
an industrious, submissive and orderly citizen; but in 
the eyes of a democratic mob he was guilty of the un- 
pardonable sin of being a nigger and deserved to be 
hung on a lamp-post anyhow. All of which is held to 
be just and logical in the great republic which stands 
before all the countries of the world as the splendid 
Pharos of equal rights. 

At the time when I was preparing to repulse the 
mob's expected attack upon the life of my prisoner and 
the county's property, and while stationing the armed 
men under my command where they could best defend 
the entrance to the jail, I pictured to myself the arrival 
of the moment when, to check a rush attack of the mob, 
I should be compelled to give the command to fire. For 



206 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

one short second I closed my eyes and saw as the re- 
sult of that order men staggering to the ground with 
ghastly bullet holes in their heads — ^men, moreover, 
whose faces I had known all my life, and as in fancied 
reality I heard the shriek of the widowed wife and the 
wail of the orphaned children, I shuddered, a sensation 
of indescribable horror crept through my fevered veins, 
and the thought that blood-stained faces of the dead 
should haunt my sleepless pillow from that time on 
made me distracted, and I have been truly thankful 
ever since that this bitter cup was permitted to pass 
my lips. 

Subsequent to the above-described occurrence, and 
only a few years ago, a similar riot in the same county 
necessitated the calling out of the state militia and the 
shooting to death of a number of the mob. By prompt, 
intelligent action and manly courage of the sheriff this 
dire catastrophe might have been averted and the sac- 
rifice of life avoided. 



SOME SIGHTS 

Exceptionally Attractive and Interesting^ as 
Observed in European Travel 

A GLIMPSE AT ITALY'S NORTHERN LAKES 

The greater part of Lake Como in Northern Italy lies 
in a deep indentation among steep and towering moun- 
tains, the sides of which, as well as the narrow margins 
near the water, are studded with white villas and 
shining marble porticoes. 

There is, opposite Bellagio, where the banks recede 
from the water's edge and slant more gently, a Villa 
Carlotta. This is the erstwhile abode of a high-bom 
but unhappy woman. It was to this charming spot 
that Empress Carlotta, the young widowed wife of 
Maximilian, retired to weep away her reason when 
the Mexicans shot to death her beloved husband, who 
had usurped the throne of the ancient Aztecs. 

On a visit to the lake country, which occurred in 
early summer, we found this estate a spot of rare at- 
tractiveness and incomparable beauty. Here azalias 
in every shade of bright coloring spread their dazzling 
carpet over acres upon acres of undulating park, and 
the gorgeous colors of the bright flowers banked up in 
sunny glades and on gentle sloping hillsides as far as 
the eye could reach. There is nothing to compare to 



208 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

this brilliance short of the Elysian fields, where fair 
goddesses and Greek deities on bright Olympus disport 
themselves. 

On this effulgent background dark and juicy bou- 
quets of jasmine and myrtle, interspersed everywhere 
with towering cypresses and majestic cedars from Leb- 
anon, lend their presence to immerse the beholder under 
a bright sunny vault of crisp etherial blue, in a sea of 
delight fascinating beyond compare. 

The handsome chateau contains, among many art 
treasures, a marble group known to the farthest ends 
of the earth ; here Amor and Psyche, the daintiest cre- 
ation of the great Canova's chisel, finds its home. 

At no great distance to the west, and in a more open 
country, lies Lake Maggiore. In the southeastern por- 
tion of this lake, toward the shore where stands the 
large statue of Saint Carolo Borromeo, the fairies have 
dropped into the lake's silvery surface a cluster of 
three little islands. Isola Bella, one of the three, on 
its terraced surface bears a veritable paradise of shin- 
ing verdure and bright flowers, while the others re- 
mind us of the garden of the Hesperides, from where 
Heracles brought back the golden apples which earth 
had given Hera at her marriage to Zeus. 

The panorama of these beauty-spots under the blue 
sky of Italy, their feet bathed in the pellucid waters of 
the tranquil lake, is seductive enough to tempt the sen- 
timental traveler to plunge in, and among the pixies 
and fairies spend his days in their inviting retreat. 



THE RIVIERA FROM THE CORNICHE ROAD 

When fortune refuses to smile upon the gamester at 
Monte Carlo and luck is hostile, as a cure of the molly- 
grubs, let him climb the steep mountain immediately 
in the rear and above the casino, to the elevation of the 
old Corniche road, which, high up over the spurs of 
the maritime Alps, winds its broad and smoothly-paved 
way toward the city of Genoa in Italy. Here, from a 
point twelve to fifteen hundred feet above the sea, the 
beholder is rewarded with a view which nowhere on 
earth can be excelled for comprehensiveness and en- 
trancing beauty, and to the charm of which the most 
blase mortal must succumb. Far down^ but immedi- 
ately below our feet, lie snugly tucked away under 
palms and surrounded by groves of olives, Nice, Monte 
Carlo, Mentone, the port of Villefranche, San Remo 
and innumerable sparkling villas and dazzling cha- 
teaux, strung like lustrous pearls on a silver cord along 
the gently sloping white sands of the blue Mediter- 
ranean. 

Standing on the breezy heights the mind's eye may 

behold, far away to the south, the cerulean waters of 

this great inland sea wash, what on the continent of 

Africa once were the realms of Queen Dido, who per- 

15 



210 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

petrated the first known land swindle. The legend re- 
ports that "in the good old days" she cut the oxhide, 
the size of which was to determine the extent of her 
landed possessions, into long strips and with them en- 
closed, staked off and appropriated to her own use 
many times the area designated in the abstract and 
warranted by the deed. 

The Corniche road, connecting France and Italy, fol- 
lows the sinuosities of the shores of the Mediterranean ; 
it here and there hangs out on the spurs of the mari- 
time alps overlooking the sea, like a cornice, from 
which fact it derives its name. 

This road for thousands of years has formed the con- 
necting link between the east and the west of southern 
Europe, and its great extent enabled Cesar's Legions to 
conquer the Iberian peninsula and hold Gaul in subjec- 
tion. 

As the traveler, by diligence or private carriage, 
bowls along over its smooth surface, on easy grades 
and over airy viaducts at high altitudes above the blue 
waters of the sunlit sea, and observes the constantly 
varying panorama on the thickly populated shores, the 
eye is delighted beyond compare and diverted from the 
ills and pains that flesh is heir to. 

In the winter of 1866-7 I for the first time traveled 
over this wonderful highway from Nice, in France, to 
Genoa, in Italy. We left the former city at midnight. 
Fumes of garlic and funky odors soon drove me from 
the interior of the stagecoach, and at the break of day 
I climbed up to the top of the diligence, where, on the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 211 

"banquet" just behind the postilion, I found wrapped 
up in his cloak a man of international renown. This 
passenger proved to be Alexander Herzen, a Russian 
noble and political refugee, whose estates had been 
confiscated, and who in London, in the interest of Rus- 
sian reform, was then making propaganda by his able 
writings and stirring publications against autocratic 
government in his native land. 

Mr. Herzen received me as a compagnon de voyage 
cordially, and passed me as a palliative to the raw 
morning air his brandy flask. We were soon engaged in 
interesting converse, in which he developed astounding 
knowledge of the United States, its statesmen and lead- 
ing citizens, some of whom he had met in London and 
elsewhere. Like most educated Russians, he had com- 
mand of many languages, and altogether proved a 
charming companion, in whose society, while keeping 
a keen and hungry eye on the incomparable beauties of 
the landscape and the road, the hours sped uncommonly 
fast. 

When, on arrival in Genoa in the afternoon, I clam- 
bered down from my high perch, and we exchanged 
farewell greetings, my newly found friend, with great 
cordiality, invited me to visit him in Florence, where he 
expected to make a prolonged visit with his son, a pro- 
fessor of mathematics at the university of that city. 
When, a month later, I arrived in Florence, then the 
seat of government and the residence of King Victor 
Emanuel, I enjoyed not one only, but several visits at 
the hospitable and attractive home of this Russian fam- 



212 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

ily, where I learned to admire the exquisite cultivation 
of the Count's daughter, a young lady of a peculiar 
style of rugged beauty, and, like her father, a true 
specimen of the Slavonic race. 



THE GREAT INTERNATIONAL AQUARIUM 
AT NAPLES, ITALY 

The giant Gargantua, Rabelais relates, when eating 
a salad, failed to notice that he swallowed five pil- 
grims, staves and all, which were hidden in the salad. 
If this giant story is to be credited, the fact that "the 
briny" which surrounds our globe holds leviathans that 
can at one gulp swallow whole schools of the smaller 
denizens of the deep should not create surprise. 

It is difficult, yea, impossible, said my mentor one 
day, to uncover all the secrets of the impenetrable deep. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
Th« dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear. 

**Come with me to the city of Naples," said he, "and 
I will show you tanks of water from the Mediterranean 
replete with the fauna of the sea and specimens of its 
flora which shall astonish and instruct you." 

Here at this Italian seaport the leading nations of 
Europe and America maintain for scientific purposes 
an aquarium, the like of which does not exist anywhere 
else. 

The numerous glass tanks of the Naples aquarium, 
through which a fresh supply of water from the geni- 
ally-tempered sea constantly circulates, was visited 
again and again, and the observation of their inmates 
and close study of them gave me no end of pleasure. 



214 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

Some dainty and etherial forms, as they floated and 
sailed around, light and airy, much like transparent 
cloudlets in a summer sky, interested me most. There 
was the Medusa a omhrella, with pavilion and cur- 
tains in rhythmic movement of apparent breathing, 
translucent and light as a flame; it was tinted much 
like a roseate summer cloud, and floating as does an 
iridescent soap-bubble it soared up and down, here 
and there, with the adagio movement of the inaudible 
music of the deep. 

The Loligo vulgaris, like a transparent tube or 
cylinder, is slender and much the shape and double the 
size of an Upman Regalia cigar ; both ends taper ele- 
gantly like the bow and stern of a modern racing shell. 
It has fore and aft motion and was as active in its 
movements as is the piratical pike of our northern 
lakes, while the astral body is of barely sufficient dens- 
ity to reflect the delicate pearly tints of its filmy and 
transparent envelope. 

Elongated tape-like bodies, semi-transparent and of 
pale whitish hue, without navel, appendix-vermiformis 
or visible organs of any sort, attach and detach them- 
selves here and there at will, and plainly denote by 
their movements self-sustained animation and individu- 
ality. 

One of the most interesting enigmas in this class of 
creatures is the girdle of Venus ; it consists of a pale 
semi-opaque film an inch and a half wide by eight to 
nine inches in length ; a mere gossamer of slight con- 
sistency, without organs or even signs of them. And 
yet by a wave-like motion, as it floats, it propels itself, 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 215 

and only thereby establishes its status as a living entity. 
It is so frail and dainty that in order to keep it from 
rude contact a separate glass tube had to be placed in 
the tank, in which to segregate this whiff of matter 
from being blown upon or sneezed at by its more vigor- 
ous occupants. 

There were unlooked-for surprises in the tanks. One, 
a small clam-like bivalve, by the force of interior power- 
ful mechanism, would, like a rocket, shoot from the 
bottom up to the surface of the water, and then sink 
back again to the bed of sand, from where, after wip- 
ing its clammy brow, like the acrobat in a circus, it 
would repeat the stunt ad infinitum. 

The Scorpcena porcus, the hedgehog among fishes, 
weighing a pound or two only, of a color resembling 
that of a dirty red brick, is thickly covered from end 
to end with misshapen warts and excrescences, and the 
bulging eyes would indicate a long continued "toot," 
with subsequently resulting Katzen jammer. 

Fantastically-crippled crustaceans of most eccentric 
shape moseyed around aimlessly like well-paid depart- 
ment clerks in Washington, illustrating "how not to do 
it." The Hermit crab, a conservative member of that 
family, lies modestly withdrawn into a piece of broken 
molasses jug, immersed in philosophical contemplation, 
while the Parthenope horrida, another one of the tribe, 
uglier and more misshapen than a nightmare, lay in 
an opposite corner watching the electric eel send out 
shocks to the aristocratically-bred little lady fishes of 
"the four hundred." 

Gazing into an adjoining tank containing starfishes, 



2l6 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

sea urchins and other bric-a-brac of the shoals, I was 
mildly startled at the sight of a dear little seahorse 
{Hippocampus hrevirostris) which was actually alive. 
Up to that time I had knowledge of him only as a shell 
or dried mummy among the dusty rubbish of cheap col- 
lections of pebbles and shells which children and old 
maids bring from their summer outing on the seashore, 
and which, in crewel-embroidered little pasteboard bas- 
kets, occupy the most favored place among the plaster- 
paris fruits and images on the whatnot in the corner of 
the parlor. While he was standing in the water proudly 
erect, I caught his furtive glance eying my horseshoe 
scarf pin ; he was apparently waiting to be hitched to a 
basket phaeton, such as dainty little curly-headed Mary 
Alice drives in the park. For propulsion I could find 
neither legs nor fins, but by the motion of the sand 
under his lower end I detected a tiny turbine or pro- 
peller wheel, which, when the throttle on the steam- 
chest opened, sent him along, head erect, at a two-min- 
ute gait. 

In several of the tanks there grew on long stems 
what appeared to be plants or weeds ; on close investi- 
gation I however detected that their leafy tops, which 
periodically opened and closed, contained and regularly 
exposed living heads of the Vermis family, they be- 
ing part and parcel of the make-belief plant. 

An Acaleph or jellyfish of large size, who, when in 
the humor, envelops himself in a thick black slime of 
his own making, lay like a shapeless lump of putty 
peaceably in his corner; while the Octopus, known to 
Jack Tar as the devil-fish, was here represented by 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 217 

several specimens. As with squirming movement they 
slid and snaked their long prehensile tentacles, armed 
with sucking valves of deadly power, I was reminded 
of the sensation of horror which long years ago over- 
came me, when I read Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the 
Sea," and the author's description of the death-grapple 
between the sailor and one of these monsters. 

Corals in horny splendor, of fantastic shapes and at- 
tractive coloring, abound in these tanks filled with 
crystalline water, and miniature meadows covering 
improvised rocky cliffs afford glimpses of deep-sea 
life, and charmed the beholder as he watched the mys- 
tic weaving motion of the slender-stemmed submarine 
flora. Thousands of graceful radiolaria, of pretty 
meduscB and corals of extraordinary shape, mollusks 
and crabs, suddenly introduced me to a wealth of hid- 
den organisms beyond all anticipation, the peculiar 
beauty and diversity of which far transcend all fancies 
of the human imagination. 

The deeps and the shallows are replete with life; 
both fauna and flora exist in abundance, but where, in 
the green opalescent depths, animal life begins and the 
plant ends can only be determined by the scientist ; it 
is beyond my ken. 



THE HILL OF THE ALHAMBRA 

Once upon a time in southern Spain I stood on the 
hill where sits the great ruin of the Alhambra, the 
erstwhile fortress and palace of that proud race of 
Moorish monarchs who for seven hundred years held 
this fair and fruitful part of the European continent 
in subjection and ruled it for their own. These Moors 
were a handsome and a valiant race of men and women. 
They were far advanced in the sciences, and their 
people practiced the handicrafts and arts of civiliza- 
tion to a remarkable degree, and in many ways sur- 
passed the natives they had displaced. The halls, 
apartments and patios of the Alhambra in their ruined 
state to this day show the exquisite taste possessed by 
the dark-skinned followers of the Prophet, and noth- 
ing more beautiful in design nor attractive in coloring 
than the dainty needlework in wood and stone can be 
found in the opulent Orient anywhere. 

From the top of the hill, whose sides are covered 
with the thorny Barbary fig, among these interesting 
surroundings, standing upon a piece of broken wall, I 
looked down upon the smiling and highly-cultivated 
plain of Granada surrounding the beautiful city of 
same name, and mused upon its past, when Columbus 
planned his voyage into the unknown west, and how 
Ferdinand and Isabella, whose ashes repose in the 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 219 

crypt of one of the great churches at my feet, en- 
couraged and aided the ambitious scheme of the daring 
discoverer of "a new world." 

Immersed in a dreamy reverie, as I was, there also 
passed before my mental vision a phantom host of 
Saracen warriors led by the Moslem crescent, capari- 
soned in African splendor. In their wake came in 
shadowy procession an armored and picturesque swarm 
of the Andalusian flower of chivalry bearing aloft the 
standard of the Christian cross. 

In this vision I philosophically realized the muta- 
bility of all things terrestrial which rules nations and 
individual man alike. The change, however, from the 
practices of Islam to that of the followers of the com- 
passionate Jesus did not in that day tend toward better- 
ment of morals, if the following gruesome sketch from 
Spanish history is considered. 

In a bodega in the city of Seville one day I fell 
into conversation with a Spanish gentleman who spoke 
fairly good English. He attracted my attention to the 
site of the Alcazar, the palace inhabited during the 
fourteenth century by Don Pedro I, king of Castile and 
Leon, known to history as "The Cruel," and told me 
that according to one of the chronicles Don Diego Al- 
buquerque relates: That while a guest at the dinner 
table of the cruel king, he had the good fortune to 
have for neighbor one of the gentlemen of the court, 
who, an entertaining companion over his cups, became 
quite communicative. 

"At the last banquet here in this palace to which I 
was summoned," the gentleman said, "my attention 



220 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

was attracted to a vacant chair at the festive board." 
He pointed to a place near the upper end close to 
where Maria Padilla, the morganatic and beautiful wife 
of the king, sat. The place had on former occasions 
been occupied by Don Fredrego, the king's younger 
brother. 'The last time I laid eyes on that noble and 
gifted prince," the relator continued, "was in the fine 
city of Coimbra, which he with great skill and bravery 
had succeeded in wresting from the Moors. 

"Behind closed lattices many a Moorish maiden 
watched the handsome young soldier as he rode 
through the narrow streets of Alkanzar, his cloak em- 
bellished with the Calatrava cross lightly thrown back 
from the shoulder, and the plumes on his helmet flutter- 
ing gayly in the breeze. Close by his side was his ever- 
faithful dog Allan, a noble specimen from the Sierra, 
who, of great size and elegant proportions, wore a 
golden collar thickly studded with rubies. On account 
of the dog's constant companionship with his master, 
it was popularly believed that the collar had imbedded 
in it a talisman of loyalty and devotion. 

"At the banquet of which I speak," said the gentle- 
man at my side, "a somber mood brooded over the 
company, for the king's brow wore a sinister frown 
and he looked darkly upon the revelers. The signal 
to arise from the feast had just been given when, with 
great strides, into the banquet hall leaped Don Fredre- 
go's dog Allan, showing to the horrified assembly the 
bloody head of his master suspended from his power- 
ful jaws by the curly dark tresses which in life had so 
nobly graced that intellectual dome. The dog, with his 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 221 

gruesome burden, made straight for the vacant chair, 
dropped the head upon it and disappeared as quickly 
as he had come. 

"The company, at this gruesome sight, stood aghast 
and silent. Maria Padilla, the first to find her voice, in 
accents of anguish and with vehemence condemned the 
foul murder which had been secretly ordered by the 
king in malicious envy of the increasing popularity of 
his handsome, cultured and valiant brother, who treach- 
erously had been lured into the subterranean vaults of 
the palace, where, overpowered, he had been beheaded 
by orders from the king. The faithful dog, unobserved 
in the somber light, had followed his beloved master, 
and when the head fell, pounced upon and swiftly bore 
it to the banquet hall. 

"Maria Padilla's two young and innocent sons, at 
the hands of Pedro II, who soon succeeded Pedro the 
Cruel, were viciously made to bear the revenge the 
mother's quaking heart had feared. The young princes 
were later on found starving and in filth, walled up in 
stone cells, as were animals in adjoining kennels, and 
cruelly subjected to the lash." 



FAIRYLAND 

On the slopes of the Alban range of mountains, im- 
mediately below the picturesque falls of the river Anio, 
and overlooking the Roman Campagna, is situated the 
Villa D'Este. This extensive estate is the property 
of Cardinal Hohenlohe, one of the princes of the 
church. Near by is Tivoli, and not far distant are the 
ruins of the Emperor Hadrian's palace, while the dome 
of St. Peter's in the Eternal City, as it looms up in a 
purple haze twenty miles away to the east, closes the 
charming view. 

I was profoundly moved by the rush of the waters 
from this mountain stream, as they leap over the rocks, 
break into diamond sparklets and fall back upon them- 
selves in profuse showers of silver. Much of the crys- 
talline flood flows through the park of the Villa D'Este, 
and there in babbling brooks, cascades and innumerable 
fountains, enlivens and embellishes this abode of the 
fairies. 

Although I had never before entered this garden, it 
immediately impressed itself upon me as an old ac- 
quaintance, as if I had actually been there before, and 
as if I had formerly seen its hedges of laurel, its blos- 
soming thickets, its vine-embowered old buildings, and 
its aged weather-beaten statues, and had breathed the 
air laden with an aroma of the blossom-covered shrubs 



REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 223 

and trees which the sparkling sunHght of a bright June 
morning had distilled. I could not remember where 
and at what time I had seen all this, and the uncertainty 
disquieted me as it always does when I can not unravel 
a mystery upon the solution of which I have set my 
heart. All at once I was overcome by a sensation of 
satisfaction. Instantly I knew where I was, and I said 
to myself, *'I now know this garden perfectly well. 
Long years ago when a child I saw it. It was when, in 
the dusk of the evening, mother related to me the fairy 
story of the Sleeping Beauty of the wood. Then it was 
that I beheld this charmed castle with its roses, its ivy 
and its dark-green hedges just exactly as I see it now." 

I observed the thousands of roses, from the lightest 
pink satin to the darkest crimson velvet, floating down 
from the terraces, woven as it were into a fragrant veil ; 
how creeping and hanging clusters of roses closed the 
entrance to deep and cool grottoes, and how old Nep- 
tune by clouds of flowers was embowered in his watery 
basin as if he too were one of Dornroschen's courtiers. 

Nothing disturbed the deep calm and hush of this 
quiet place but the soft splash of the fountains and the 
twitter of the birds. "Oh, if this is not fairyland, then 
fairyland is nowhere to be found," I exclaimed. 

We seated ourselves on a stone bench in the shadow 
of some great dark cypresses, and our half-closed eyes 
dreamily followed the shaded roadway as it passed on 
to the castle over the rose-embowered terraces ; passed 
by the long sweeping stairway with the maimed and 
broken cupids; passed the sprays of numerous foun- 
tains, and up to the projecting cornice of the towering 



224 REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIANIAN 

walls of the castle, where the white statues appeared 
upon the parapet in bold relief against the pure blue of 
the sky; and on all sides there was a sea of blossoms 
enveloping us in a cloud of sweet odors. Here pome- 
granates, burst their shining red buds, and agaves with 
their gigantic blossoms, reached for the same life-giv- 
ing sunshine which was ripening oranges and lemons 
on the same twig with the budding blossoms, seem- 
ingly not knowing how to dispose of all this wealth of 
theirs, nor where to give as best they might. 



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